Road Trip Day 2: The Long Ride

Despite not eating dinner until well after 9:00 the night before and being fairly tired, we managed to get up, get ready, have the hotel breakfast, and be checked out of the hotel and on the road by just after 8:00 today.  The check out person was much nicer than the check in person.  Today was going to be the longest ride of our road trip.  We were driving from New York to Milwaukee.  We made a rest stop in the morning.   Then it was on to Ohio where we made a lunch stop, but the options weren't great so instead we used the bathroom and Mike bought a snack--because you know we didn't have a ton in the car or anything.  We stopped again a little later in Ohio and found better food options.  We each got a slice of pizza and a bread stick.   There was a gas station there too so we got gas.  We hit some serious traffic by Chicago--I can't imagine what that must be like at rush hour because it was a Saturday afternoon and it was nuts.  We got to our hotel between 6:00 and 7:00.  The lady who checked us in was probably the friendliest hotel person we met the whole trip.  We hung out in the room for a little while and decided to just eat dinner in the hotel since we were kind of tired from the long day of driving--or in my case riding since Mike did all the driving.  The food was pretty good.  I had fish and chips and we both tried a local beer.  I drank it, but I have no desire to drink it again, I'm not really a beer fan, but I figured I'd try it--I would be trying several more beers during this trip too.  Mike enjoyed his, I believe it was called Spotted Cow.  We took a peek at the outdoor bar after dinner--it was lovely, but we weren't in the mood for more drinks and then called it a night.
The next blog posts should be a little more interesting because we finally got to see stuff besides rest stops.  :-)  Here are a few pictures I took while in the car. Mike actually rocked out to "Bye Bye Bye" while driving.  I found that quite amusing.

Road Trip Day 1

My husband and I have always wanted to do a road trip.  We figured it would be easier to do before we had kids.  My brother was getting married in Denver, CO so that seemed like a good excuse to do one.  We originally wanted to drive out to Denver for the wedding, then head to New Mexico (I've never been there), Arizona (to visit a friend), and Las Vegas (because hubs had only been there once and it was a brief trip), then fly home.  Unfortunately, to rent a car on one side of the country and return it to the other side resulted in a $1000-$1200 fee so we nixed that plan.  To rent around here and return in Vegas was going to cost around $2000, but to rent here and return here (with lots more miles) was going to cost under $600.  So weird.  I figured since it was a chain, it'd be easy to do.  It's not like every time you rent a car it has plates from the state you're in.  In fact, the one we rented wasn't from our state or even a state that touches our state.
So as you know from previous posts, instead, we went to Arizona and Las Vegas in April and then planned to drive to Denver and drive home from Denver and NM would just have to wait for another time.
The hubs worked a half day the day we began our road trip. I spent that half of the day doing last minute packing, going to the gym, getting my nails done (hey I wanted to look good for the wedding), doing a load of laundry, a little cleaning, and basically making sure everything was good to go.  He got home around 1:30 and we were on the road by 2:30. We made one or two rest stops and got to the hotel before 9:00.  Our first stop, was just a random hotel off the highway in New York.  Our plan was to go to Milwaukee the next day (we had booked two nights there).  We found the hotel easily, but the entrance road wasn't clearly marked so we drove by it twice--yeah, we're cool like that.  We checked in (I was not impressed with the girl who checked us in, but the guy who checked us out the next day was much better) then Mike ran down the street to the Chili's to get dinner to go as we hadn't stopped for dinner.  After dinner, we watched a little tv (and I read) and then it was bed time for the long drive tomorrow.     Here we are on the ride and eating dinner on day 1.