#WestwardHo

And we’re off. With our packs ready, the Subaru packed to about the brim, and enough munchie food to keep Jesse content most of the drive to Chicago, we set off on the adventure. Chicago’s drive, can I just say, is longer than it seems like it should be. Google Maps claims that it is only 10 hours; however, it seemed to be the longest 10 hours ever.  Actually no it was 10 hours ... we just didn’t know at the time what 10 hours was like I suppose. We would realize long drives the next day en route to South Dakota. 

What can I say about driving through a bunch of states at a fairly rapid speed? Oh! First the tunnels. I-77 in Virginia is a fan of some tunnels cutting right through mountains. And they are awesome. They remind me of being a kid traveling to Jersey for the summer and crossing the Chesapeake Bay via tunnel. We used to try to hold our breath the entire way, which never happened because that tunnel takes like 5 minutes to drive through and what 8 year old do you know that can hold their breath for 5 minutes? I didn’t try to hold my breath this time...that shall be reserved solely for the Chesapeake. 

Next up West Virginia ... I know the Wild and the Wonderful ... they have these travel plazas which are kind of confusing. Well the plaza itself is not confusing; they are actually quite convenient. But there are multiples of them in the Wild and Wonderful state and they all are EXACTLY the same. So you feel like you’ve visited that exact travel plaza before, but in turn you actually probably just stopped at another one on some random road trip through the night in your early 20s (or really I should be saying ‘I’ not you...I took these random trips; perhaps you did too, but I don’t know these things). Oh and they are a hub for every stereotypical person you could have in West Virginia. You’ve got the random goth girl with skull/cross tattoos and gauges working the register at the Starbucks; then the teeny-bopper possibly high school cheerleader fixing your coffees; the dread-head festi-friend working at S’barro; and then a whole bunch of random folks that make you feel like you're perhaps in a Wal-Mart ... that is until you remind yourself that you are not, you are just in a West Virginian Travel Plaza.

Upon surviving the West Virginia Travel Plaza, we head west ... #westwardho! ... that is to Kentucky. Now I love Kentucky ... I really do! It’s the home of bourbon and bluegrass .... I mean what is NOT to love!!?? However, the back road was fun for about the first 30 - 40 miles; the other 40 - 50 mile got old real fast .... we were super happy that we fueled up right before that road because running out of gas out there would have been treacherous. I didn’t think that I would be so happy to see Ohio, but I so was. Ohio was a blink ... we drove through Cincinnati and pretty much that was it ... and onto Indiana. Indiana was full of corn. I have never seen corn fields like they have in Indiana. Oh, and turbines ... ... lots and lots of wind farms, which made my soul real happy. I think had it not been for the turbines, I would have been much less content with the state of Indiana.

By the time we reached Chicago, it was late. We had trekked about 1,000 miles, crossed into a new time zone, and passed through enough states to make us both ready to crash out. And luckily, Amber and Audrey had a sweet spot with a very comfy air mattress and a couch that was actually big enough for Jess, which made us both super happy.