Chicagoland

We opted to take public transportation into Chicago from Portage Indiana. This way we'd save ourselves the hassle of looking for parking in downtown. After calculating the cost of driving the truck the 40 miles one way, plus toll fees, plus parking fees, the $7.50 one way ticket on the train didn't sound so bad. The South Shore Line ran a pretty good schedule, with trains departing the Portage station almost every hour. We caught the 9:08 train in the morning, and after the hour and 20 minute commute, we were dropped off right in the middle of downtown at Millennium Station.

Indiana Dunes Nat'l Lakeshore

Our next destination was Portage, Indiana. Why Portage, you ask? Oh, because that’s the only place where we could find an RV park close enough to Chicago. There were several other options equally far from the city, but we picked Portage because it had easy access to the city via train, and because it was near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We drove 132 miles from Milwaukee to Portage, and managed to pay $26.20 in toll fees, $13.75 of which was paid for crossing one measly bridge. We also added two new states to our state count for this trip: Illinois and Indiana, states 17 and 18.