here's my post from Day 3, Friday April 10th -- Lindsey
Woke up a little earlier today and walked to the river to take some photos. Also saw the Chicago Theater (so jealous .. Leonard Cohen and a Doo-Wop group are on the marquee). It’s damn cold in Chicago. And Windy. My ears were sooo cold.
Staff was extremely nice and helpful, but there were people waiting behind us to get out so we felt a little rushed. But it’s only 1 hour to Wilmington where we take a brief break to see the Gemini Giant which is so totally going to be on someone’s lawn. We can re set up the camera and get better situated then I guess.
Here we are on the road again, eating nutrigrain bars and goldfish and singing along with my road trip mix (yesterday was most of matt’s). I’ve only spilled and stepped on a few goldfish crackers, so so far the car is pretty clean inside. Cluttered, but not a complete disaster. Movin Right Along is such an awesome song, from the Muppet Movie. It makes me happy. “California Here We Come”….But first Nebraska and Tonopah, NV.
Realized this morning that while we’re gaining an hour with every stop on the way, it’ll be reversed on the way back, which will be a bit of a pain. We’ll just have to remember to account for that. But it’s awesome for right now since we started off a little late. We’ll probably catch up and be able to be up for 5 or 6 tomorrow. Today we left Chicago around 7:45 or 8 am.
Eww the windshield is splattered with the giant bugs that attack us at night. And during the day. Gonna have to clean that the next time we get gas.
Signing off for now!
--- Later ---
The Mississippi River is much dirtier than the Hudson. Or at least it looked like it was as we crossed it. We’re through Illinois, passing through Ohio currently and the gray/whiteness of the sky is starting to give way to blue skies with scattered clouds. Temperature is 51 degrees right now, though extremely windy when we stopped at a rest stop a moment ago. There are a lot of crazy billboards in the middle of wheat fields, except the wheat is all cut and hasn’t started growing again so it’s like a billboard and the farm and nothing growing. Very strange.
Just saw a billboard for the World’s Largest Truck Stop, may have to stop by. Okay, we have officially been to the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Iowa and … yes it is that large. It was practically a one store mall. Anything you could possibly want from trucker stuff like hood ornaments and those crazy flashy lights they have to postcards, bags of marbles, food, books, movies, cassette tapes, video games to play, a restaurant, a few fast food joints too. HUGE. There were like 8 rooms AND an upstairs Trucker’s Lounge.
I’m hoping we see more billboards like that that we can just stop at instead of having to plan everything out. Granted, that took us a while to explore and time is short today, but whatever. We saw a World’s Largest and that makes me happy.
So far – construction in every single state, a small castle in Ohio, the Gemini Giant in Illinois and the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Iowa. Yay.
Later –
Just finished driving for a little while, letting Matt take over for the rest of the trip to Alliance probably. We’re hopefully not too far off, maybe 3 hours or something. First I have to tell you about the Albino Smoke Monster. Those who watch Lost know what I’m talking about. We were driving on 80 in the middle of Iowa somewhere and to our right we see this road that runs parallel. From this road is a massive kick up of white dust and it’s moving at a crazy fast speed – like 70 or 80 mph – ahead of us and then it just zooms off. We could see absolutely nothing that could be kicking up the dust so we decided that it was an Albino Smoke Monster.
A little later towards the end of Iowa/ beginning of Nebraska we started to see a lot of windmills which was really beautiful and awesome. I was driving so Matt got all the photos of those, but I loved looking at them and seeing their sheer size. Such a cool thing. There’s been some really great driving today. From complete flatness to rolling hills. It’s bizarre seeing a horizon line. Right now the sun is setting and there are very very few trees to block it, which is both beautiful and strange to me.
We’re now on what Nebraskans call NE-2 which to us just looks like a two way road in the middle of nowhere. But the speed limit is 55 so… um it’s kind of a highway?
Okay, gonna cut out for now.
Longest Post So Far. Still on this NE-2 road, going to be on it for a while yet. Running late, as per usual. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.
Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
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.
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.
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