126 miles via US 12, IL 53, I-290 and I-355 with a lunch stop at Nora’s Cafe in Elkhorn WI. Cumulative TS8 route miles: 1313. Cumulative TS8 car miles: 1516. Car miles since the end of Hop 4: 267. The extra 141 miles were due to all the various activities we had during our week in Madison.
This was, technically, an easy hop. Just 2.5 hours. But we couldn’t check into our Lombard hotel until after 2 and we left at 10:30am, so we had time to kill. Because we had the time and because I hate the tolls on the I-90 tollway into Chicago, I decided to travel US 12. This is, mostly, a pretty decent road and lightly traveled until it gets into IL. And it adds only about 30 minutes to the travel time compared to I-90. But Ooma hates two-lane roads and reminded me of that fact repeatedly. We took a break for a nice breakfast/lunch in Elkhorn WI and another brief stop at a Target in IL to get bananas and a new water bottle for Ooma so we had a few strategic breaks along the way and didn’t strangle each other.
Our home in Madison was the Sleep Inn & Suites. The hotel was clean, the bed was comfortable and the cable TV lineup was quite good. But the breakfasts were a huge disappointment. The only hot item was waffles, which we don’t much care for. We went out to breakfast several times.