Day 1 - Destination: St. Louis
After awaking at "o'dark thirty", and seeing the beautiful sunrise to the left, we got gas, back-tracked to Baltimore to pick up the beginning of 70 (which is a giant u-turn! really cool) and we were on our way! On our back window, Susi used window marker to write:The Great American Road Trip
Current Destination:
St. Louis
Current Destination:
St. Louis
So for the very first leg of the trip, I'm sure people thought we were crazy, since we were driving the wrong direction! It was just crazy enough for us!
This is the sign that inspired the road trip. Last summer, I was picking up Susi from the airport, and we got on very close to the beginning and saw this sign, and we kinda half-joking said, "We should go there!" And then we figured out that Cove Fort is NOT in California (as would be expected) but in the middle of Utah. An anti-climatic ending to a road trip if I ever met one. So now there's a new master plan that invloves 22 states:
(Sadly, the signs for Maryland, Illinois and Missouri were missed and will be shot later and added)
A totally random 30 minute standstill right before Ohio began. There didn't seem to be any reason at all, even after we started moving again. There was some travelers' cameraderie as we all decided whether or not to bail and drive the opposite direction on the shoulder back to a cut across to the other direction.
Making an "Ohio buddy" in the form of a trucker who we were keeping roughly on pace with for a few hours. He was really excited to see us and kept waving at us every time we'd pass each other and even let us merge in once when we were trying to figure out how to stay on the right road. A ton of other people would wave or honk and give us a thumbs up, but this guy really made our day.
The giant cross. By this point, Susi had pulled out the Gameboy and was ignoring the scenery (I know, it's a travesty, but the Gameboy is new and a novelty, so I'll give her some leeway). So I tell her to look up because there's a giant cross. She takes her dear sweet time, and when she finally does look up, she's like, "Whoa. You weren't kidding!" It's seriously huge. You get some idea from the van in the foreground, but it's not like this set back far from the road. It's some kind of memorial or monument.
And finally, arriving at our destination. After a scenic detour (the directions from GoogleMaps wanted us to bail on 70!) I managed to remember the way that we'd come into town at Thanksgiving and we were greeted by lovely smiling faces, lots of hugs and a great dinner. For our longest day, we were both surprised by how good we felt (especially with only 4 stops!) A lot of it was what we were eating (really healthy stuff: fruit, veggies, cheese, whole wheat pretzels, and fruit-sweetened drinks) and the rest must have been the music. We had fantastic music, including (props to Sissy) a mix CD with a song to listen to at most of our state border crossings and other points of musical interest. We heard things like the Indiana Jones theme song, Meet Me in St. Louis, P-A-T-A-S-K-A-L-A and new songs we'd never heard before but were surprisingly cool! Hope you're all having as much fun as we are (even though you couldn't possibly be!)
Love, Us
This is the sign that inspired the road trip. Last summer, I was picking up Susi from the airport, and we got on very close to the beginning and saw this sign, and we kinda half-joking said, "We should go there!" And then we figured out that Cove Fort is NOT in California (as would be expected) but in the middle of Utah. An anti-climatic ending to a road trip if I ever met one. So now there's a new master plan that invloves 22 states:
(Sadly, the signs for Maryland, Illinois and Missouri were missed and will be shot later and added)
Other highlights from the first day:
Making an "Ohio buddy" in the form of a trucker who we were keeping roughly on pace with for a few hours. He was really excited to see us and kept waving at us every time we'd pass each other and even let us merge in once when we were trying to figure out how to stay on the right road. A ton of other people would wave or honk and give us a thumbs up, but this guy really made our day.
The giant cross. By this point, Susi had pulled out the Gameboy and was ignoring the scenery (I know, it's a travesty, but the Gameboy is new and a novelty, so I'll give her some leeway). So I tell her to look up because there's a giant cross. She takes her dear sweet time, and when she finally does look up, she's like, "Whoa. You weren't kidding!" It's seriously huge. You get some idea from the van in the foreground, but it's not like this set back far from the road. It's some kind of memorial or monument.
And finally, arriving at our destination. After a scenic detour (the directions from GoogleMaps wanted us to bail on 70!) I managed to remember the way that we'd come into town at Thanksgiving and we were greeted by lovely smiling faces, lots of hugs and a great dinner. For our longest day, we were both surprised by how good we felt (especially with only 4 stops!) A lot of it was what we were eating (really healthy stuff: fruit, veggies, cheese, whole wheat pretzels, and fruit-sweetened drinks) and the rest must have been the music. We had fantastic music, including (props to Sissy) a mix CD with a song to listen to at most of our state border crossings and other points of musical interest. We heard things like the Indiana Jones theme song, Meet Me in St. Louis, P-A-T-A-S-K-A-L-A and new songs we'd never heard before but were surprisingly cool! Hope you're all having as much fun as we are (even though you couldn't possibly be!)
Love, Us
posted by Susanna at 12:19 AM
1 Comments:
Great update and pictures!
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