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.