This afternoon it became even more hazy than when I arrived. The National Weather Service also has an air quality alert. In the map below, areas in red are “unhealthy” with explanation “Everyone may begin to experience health effects; members of sensitive groups may experience more series health effects”. At least it isn’t purple as “very unhealthy” as was in Chicago today. The wind continues to push smoke from the Canadian wildfires further south causing this problem. Hopefully tomorrow morning will be better.

Update: Checking @ 3 am the trends became worse and now in the “very unhealthy” range. Changed my travel plans to take a rest day in Decatur and proceed on Thursday.

The second issue showed up as I started to settle in the bed. I noticed a bed bug crawling by one of the pillows. Yuck! I tried switching to the other bed (this room had twin queen beds). Then I found a second bed bug in the sheets. OK, enough of this – this doesn’t seem wise to sleep in beds with bed bugs and get bitten or have them infect my luggage. Not quite as bad as the cricket infestation in Peru but still troublesome. I had the two squashed bed bugs on my phone and took the photo below. I went down to the lobby and checked out of the room. I will now see how to get a refund (Expedia has a virtual agent that is particularly unhelpful and default options don’t let you cancel since I had already checked in). Will now also need to watch extra carefully the next few days to make sure they didn’t get into my luggage (and perhaps find a spray).