On The Road Again...

"On the road again...." This is what I got to hear David sing each morning as we got back on the road to head out! Nothing like starting each day with a little singing! As I write this, we have completed 5 days of driving. So much has happened, and so much hasn't happened. What I mean is- the trip has been filled with things I will remember, and at the same time there have been so many opportunities for things to go wrong and we've been blessed with a very smooth trip.

Day 2 was one of the harder days of our trip. It was the first "long" day of driving and it took nearly the ENTIRE day just to get through the state of Montana. I can appreciate some of the beauty of Montana, and I never imagined I wouldn't like Montana, and I realize there are probably many other parts of Montana than just what we saw from i-90... but after 550 + miles of trees and ranches- I was ready for some new scenery. It was particularly stressful for David because the roads weren't well taken care of, there was LOTS of construction areas (often down to just one lane), and lots of hills and passes which are hard on the truck. By the time we finally got out of Montana we were both pretty exhausted. We made it just inside the border of Wyoming and stopped. We were desperate to stop and there was nothing out there really so we ended up paying $90 for a CRAPPY 1 bed room at a Super 8. It was the second most expensive room of our trip and by far the worst. Amazing what circumstances will allow you to justify paying for something.

Day 3 was much easier just because we were happy that we weren't in Montana anymore. It was probably the easiest day of driving too. Wyoming was very beautiful and South Dakota was super easy driving for David. He said, after reflecting, that if he had let me drive at all, it would've been in South Dakota because it was a lot of straight, flat, easy driving. One of the highlights of day 3 was when we stopped just inside the border of South Dakota at a Safeway to grab lunch and ice. We met this old man, he was probably 80-85 years old, who chatted it up with us for awhile. He never told us his name, but I imagine it would have been Bob or Bill or George or something. He saw our car was from Washington and said, "Looks like you kids are a long way from home." He told us all about his ranch in Wyoming, his wife he lost 20 years ago and misses every day, and the Bible. He gave David advice on "loving your girl every day and not staying mad at her," and told us a story about Joseph from the Bible. He asked David what the writing on his arm was and David told him it was Hebrew because he is half Jewish. The man responded with, " Which half?" Like meaning, literally his right or left half. He was so cute and funny. It was one of those things where it didn't matter what kind of hurry we were in, we both knew it was worth stopping and enjoying this conversation with this man. Definitely a Day 3 highlight for us. We ended up stopping just before the South Dakota border that evening and hit our 3rd Super 8 in a row and even got to enjoy a nice little hot tub at this one to relax after the long day!

Day 4 was pretty uneventful. We got through Minnesota and Wisconsin and stopped part way through Illinois. The best part of THIS DAY was the hotel. David was following signs to the Cracker Barrel because I had been talking about it ever since we got into Cracker Barrel land. For those of you that don't know what Cracker Barrel is, I am so sorry. I grew up going to Cracker Barrel's with my dad's side of the family every time we would come back to Indiana in the summers. My family has MANY great memories there. It's delicious country home cookin'. We're talked chicken fried chicken with gravy, buiscuits, country green beans, country fried apples, and peach ice tea. That's what I had for dinner. Hee hee. And the other half the restaurant is a fun country store. And there are rows of rocking chairs out front that you can rock in if you have to wait to be seated. If you ever find yourself nearby a Cracker Barrel, I recommend going. Anyway, I had been making an ordeal out of every Cracker Barrel sign we saw out there (cuz what else is there to do on a 2800 mile road trip), so David being the sweetheart that he is decided to arrange our stop so that we were nearby the Cracker Barrel so we could go to dinner there. We decided to try asking the hotel that was right next to the Cracker Barrel if they had availability and sure enough they did. They quoted us $100 for the night which was more than we'd been paying, but we decided we had done well with saving money other places and would save money by being able to have breakfast there and not have to go buy it somewhere else like we had been with the Super 8's. So we went ahead and unloaded and stopped there. Then once we started to check in and pay, the girl at the front desk said, "how about $85 instead?" And we were like, "REALLY? That's awesome! This is our 4th day on the road and we are exhausted and you just have no idea how much that makes our day!" David headed out to go grab suitcases and she starts to hand me the keys and says, "I also upgraded you to the King Suite." I looked at her and said, "Are you serious?" She said, "Yep!" It was AWESOME! Beautiful room, big bed, 3rd floor. It was great. AND we had a good breakfast in the morning. Best night we'd had so far.

Day 5 (yesterday) competed with our Day 2 Montana day in stressful-ness. We headed out and within a half hour or so were getting into Chicago mess. Tons of traffic, bad drivers, bad roads, tolls. We felt like we had been on the road for 8 hours by the time it was 11:00. David said he was pretty sure going through that mess took years off his life. Ha ha! Once we got out of Chicago the traffic wasn't bad, but there were many poorly kept roads and tons of tolls. We paid nearly $100 in tolls yesterday going through Illinois, Ohio, and the Pennsylvania border. Crazy! We wanted to get over the Penn border badly so we pushed through our drive until about 8:30 at night or so, and then started looking for cities off the highway like we'd been doing all along. But last night we learned when you're on a turnpike, it's really just a way of travel. There isn't really anything along it as far as lodging and gas. So we decided to head about 15-20 min south to a couple of towns we could see on the map that had hotels. We started calling around about 9:00 and EVERY place was full. All the sudden it clicked for me. We had waited until 9:00 on a Saturday night in the summer to reserve a place to stay. It was probably gonna be a lot harder to find a room that night. I found this one place called "The Inn" nearby that had one room left and was by all the other hotels so we decided to go check it out. David pulled into the parking lot and we were immediately regretting it. It was a tiny parking lot with NOWHERE to turn around. I went inside to ask about where we could park and they didn't reallly have anywhere for us to go. The woman working the desk was really nice and tried offering suggestions (unhooking the trailer from the truck, parking at the other hotel lot next door, backing down and around the corner of the hotel), but none of them were very good options. After a half hour or so of being exhaustede and trying to decide what to do, we decided it was best to just keep driving and move along. This moment was by far the most stressful & challenging time of our entire trip so far. We had nowhere to stay, no idea where to go, it was late, we were tired, there didn't really seem to be any cities around. We had to take a moment to just stop, say a deep breath, and ask for a little help from above. The nice desk person inside the hotel had suggested a place before I left and gave me their phone number. So I called ahead and reserved a room and we headed to the Comfort Inn and Suites just outside of Pittsburgh. It was a miracle! They had enough parking, it was only $110 for the night, and it was somewhere safe to stay. RELIEF! The girl at the front desk even gave us a brochure for her favorite delivery place nearby that was still open and we ordered in pizza. And the room was great. It all ended up working out fine and we had survived our first real adrenaline rush!

We woke up this morning ready to take on Day 6, the last leg of our journey. Luckily we only have about 6-7 hours of driving left today so David FINALLY let us have a slightly lazier morning and I had enough time to finally update this thing. If it hadn't been for David keeping us on track I probably wouldn't arrive in Philly for at least another 5 days! Ha ha! We just ate a good breakfast and are ready to leave our last hotel of the journey. It's hard to believe we will arrive in our new hometown today!

Tonight we are planning to stay at a friend of a friend's house of mine that has offered their guest room to us for as long as we need it. Such a blessing to already have someone to stay with. I still need to call her and make sure we can- but we had previous e-mail confirmation so we're pretty sure we're good to go. Then Monday we get to move in to the new apartment. We are so excited and anxious to see it. We rented the freight elevator from 9-1 on Monday so we're hoping we'll have the truck empty in the afternoon and be able to return it that evening. Then the mess of unpacking will begin. Ha ha! But we will have a place to stay and get to start making our new home for now which will be fun.

So now, for the last time this morning, we sing....

"On the road again...." ;-)