Day 2: PA - Chicago, from Lindsey

From today's writings:

Yesterday was .. an adventure ending around 1:30 in the morning. Today is turning out to be another kind of adventure. We haven’t really gotten turned around too much today, but everything is taking longer than the GPS told us it would. We were supposed to be in Loveland, OH by 2:30 ish… it’s 3:39 and we aren’t there yet. Hopefully by 4, but then that messes up the rest of our day a little. We should have called Chicago to reserve a room by now, but I kind of want to see what time we get to Loveland because then I can judge just how off Wilma is.

It’s a bit nervewreaking, but I’m still enjoying the ride. We were supposed to eat lunch at the castle but instead we’re munching on fruit (him), goldfish (both of us) and I just made half a PB&J sandwich. Still a little hungry, but I can wait till we get there, it shouldn’t be too much longer now.

Ohio is as flat as I remember it being and we’re going south through the state so we’re getting to see a lot of it. We passed by Columbus earlier. It’s all pretty though. Most trees are still bare, but occasionally we see some flowers and some green bushes and stuff.

-- Later –

Okay , so Loveland Castle is totally worth it. We’re driving through town and it seems like a pretty busy center of malls and restaurants and stuff, then we go residential and I’m still not seeing a castle. Finally we turn down this road and end up going down this crazy steep curvy road lined with pretty greening bushes and trees and at the bottom is this small castle. Walk in, pay our $3/person fee and get a mini informational lecture about the castle from the man at the counter. This guy in the 1920’s had a group of boys who would hike and camp and fish in the river there and they called themselves the Knights .. of something I can’t remember, so he figured if they were knights they should have a castle. He spent the next like 50 years building the castle by hand and when he passed away they turned it into a memorial museum in his honor.

It was actually a pretty cool story and the castle was fun to wander. There was a dungeon with a “wild man” skeleton and an upstairs with a dining hall room and a balcony overlooking part of the pretty gardens also on the grounds. If I was a boy in the 1930’s I would have totally loved it. Hell as a girl I would have too, but wouldn’t have been allowed in. :P There were a lot of secret hatches and ladders and things to explore that were all locked, unfortunately. There were also rooms set up that were locked like a room with a desk and a typewriter and another with a bed. Tons of suits of armour as well. :)

Took a bunch of pictures, but it was kind of dark inside so I’m not sure how many will come out. I brought my camera book so I can get better at indoor photography, but haven’t had a chance to break it out yet. Maybe tomorrow.

We’re running a little later than we thought and are currently driving through rush hour – however it’s moving very quickly for rush our and we also are going back in time once we hit the Chicago area as it’s a different time zone. Which totally works in our favor in a really good way.

Unfortunately, we can’t film this leg of the trip on the video camera because we ran out of space and haven’t really had time to transfer the files. I’m going to try to do that now while we drive and maybe I’ll be able to capture entering Chicago by hand or something. It won’t be exactly the same, but it’s a long trip. We’ll have - CRAP I just missed photographing the welcome to Indiana sign cause I was doing this. ::sigh:: and we didn’t find any tourist traps in Ohio to get stickers at. ::sigh::

Signing off for now.

 later –

We just passed a casino. Indiana LIVE! Casino. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Indiana with a tiny fountain. No photo, sorry. Too much technology on my lap right now trying to save the video files to the computer and not get lost at the same time.

Just finished transferring the video files to the computer only to discover that we actually have 4 hours left of “tape” and that we actually forgot to turn it back on after we left a rest stop at the beginning of Ohio. Oops. Gonna try to film a little of Indiana by hand and then entering Chicago. Just so there’s something.

NOW -

While I'm loving this hotel room - the layout is great and original, the view not bad, everything is nice and people were great. But one phone wasn't working - and therefore the internet wasn't working until i called for help (lan, or ethernet no wireless), the other phone works fine though. Also, there are no tissues to be found which is just bizarre. And Matt said that some guy in a gorilla suit was scaring people in the hallways. We're guessing a class trip since there seem to be a bunch of teenagers wandering around.

It's getting late, so I think we're going to crash. I'll try to go through photos a little tomorrow on the drive and see if I have any to post.