Trip 5: Day 17 (Bloomington, Champaign)

SR 46 near Ellettsville, leaving
Bloomington

 While yesterday was a bit depressing, today was the exact thing I wanted and expected from Champaign. If anything, I always have a good time talking to people here. I mean, there's not a lot to do. The #1 attraction on TripAdvisor for the city is the public library. While the library is new, nice and a comfortable place in which to spend time, it's not that interesting.
When I come to Champaign, I eat and drink. The restaurants are good and the bars are better. When I go to eat and drink, I always talk to people about various things. Tonight it was about booze, food and - my favorite subject while in Champaign - Champaign.

Interstate 74, entering Illinois

The city is an interesting mix of Chicago, Midwest college town and rural farming center. It's just a quick drive out of the development to the corn fields. In fact, where I'm staying tonight, there's a corn field across the street. But Chicago is just a little over 2 hours away, by car, bus and train. The connection is not lost here, and it's often on the tip of the tongues of most people here. Obviously with a state university in the state where such a large metropolis sits, there's going to be that connection. It's not resented like it could be but, rather, it's just sort of begrudgingly accepted, it seems.
The drive was nice. Low traffic and nice back roads. US 231 between Spencer and Greencastle is especially pretty, but I turned west toward Rockville to go through the appropriately-named Parke County, home to a number of state parks. I hit two single-lane construction delays, though that's my own fault for not researching the construction in advance.

The bad news is that my car is still getting poor gas mileage despite the tune-up and the injection cleaner gunk I poured in. I'm planning to get it looked at at the Nissan dealership in Chicago, which, although it'll save me money to not have to park my car at the airport, I'll likely have to pay for whatever repair they come up with. I don't really know what it would be that would be expensive, since everything else is fine, but I guess I know very little about cars.

The drive tomorrow will be mostly interstate. I plan to get to Chicago fairly quickly, so, from a roadtrip perspective, it'll be an uninteresting day.