Counting the Miles on Road to Vacation

It is 319.1 miles from my driveway to the Mississippi River. From the Mississippi to Interstate 51 which is now numbered Interstate 39 where we turn north from the former Illinois 5 which is now Illinois tollway 88, it is 84.1 miles. From that point until our destination, Lake Geneva, WI, it is 70.8 miles.
Fascinating? Not really. Not now anyway, but it was en route to the lake the other day. So fascinating in fact it consumed the eight hours and one minute of our time in the care. When we left home I wrote down the mileage registered on the car's odometer and the time. We forgot to note the mileage after one hour but by the two hour mark we all eagerly watched the clock so we could get a precise mileage.
I wrote it down and subtracted to find out how far we had traveled in two hours. After that we talked about other things, I don't remember what, and fiddled with the car's tape deck. We had a Billy Joel tape I wanted to hear but we couldn't get the tape deck out of the rewind gear. Eventually, the third hour rolled up on the clock. When we figured we had traveled almost 40 percent of the way, everyone cheered.
We started discussing lunch and when we would stop to eat it. In anticipation of that occasion, the high point of our trip, we broke out a bag of animal cookies ans passed them around.
At our lunch and gas stop, despite my warnings that we wouldn't be stopping again, whole cans of pop were popped open around the gas station picnic table which wasn't a picnic table at all but a cement slab underneath the Sinclair sign. Not a picturesque locale but we had our agenda. Therefore, there was no time to scout for scenic beauty.
Back on the road after lunch, we began serious calculations. We began figuring out the mileage (on the hour from our luncheon departure time we proceeded to figure the hourly mileage from our morning departure time). Then we moved on to calculating our arrival time by figuring out the miles per hour we had traveled since lunch and dividing that into the number of miles left to our destination.
"If my calculations, are correct," (I said to myself they ought to be after all the figuring), "we should be at the lake in time for Saturday evening Mass." This idea was quickly seconded by my car mates who liked visualizing the next morning, the beginning of their first day at the lake, not interrupted with dressing up and trekking to church. Being the mother, I suggested we think of the church stop as a time of thanksgiving for a safe journey instead of an obligation, but as a potential beach bum I was quietly doing somersaults of glee.
After we decided to stop off at church before pulling up to the lake house we still had a problem. We were traveling in tandem with another car. In my car were myself, my five sons, and my college niece, Kathy, who did all the driving so I could do all the refereeing. In the other car were my three girls and a college-age friend, Colleen, who was driving. John, the husband and Dad, missed the big sojourn and was to join us for the second half of our vacation and the flip-flop of our drive.
Since stopping was not allowed on the itinerary we had to signal our church plans to the car behind. We did this by hanging a note on the toll booth coin basket addressed to the Colleens in the car behind up.
Finally we arrived! The total trip 475 miles. I knew you'd want to know that.
August 17, 1988