SoS, Day 2

Opportunity squandered.

We decided to sleep in until 7 this morning as we had a "much shorter" day ahead of us.
Much shorter" in this case being about 1.5 hours less driving. Of course, a lot of that driving would be in areas east of the Mississippi - meaning decrepit roads with endless construction zones where nobody seems to actually fix anything but instead merely tears it apart more, and toll boths galore. Thus, we decided to get up only an hour later than we had the first morning.

Nothing like burning 2/3 of your margin before the opening bell.

'Course, we were already packed the first morning, and we had to re-pack everything today. That only took about a half hour, though.

And then we spent a half hour eating breakfast.

And, for some reason, today we had multiple potty emergencies (including one of my own - lunch at Denny's was maybe a bit greasy) and ended up stopping roughly once every hour.

Then since we weren't in a hurry, we went on a leisurely 20 minute bug hunt at our first stop. HannahC is collecting bugs for a 4H project.

And we played at a playground for half an hour at another stop.

The bridge over the Mississippi on I-80 is closed, so we had to detour.

All in all, we managed to arrive at our hotel in Maumee, OH, tonight about 2.5 hours later than we rolled in to our hotel yesterday. Quite a feat given how much shorter the trip was today.

At least I can keep an eye on my truck. You can go here, click the "Check you vehicle here" spot in the upper right, and then look for vehicle 26936. Oddly, I can't find a direct link for that as it appears to be a dynamically generated page. Doesn't look like they've done anything yet, but my status is now, "Vehicle is being dis-assembled." I suppose that's better than nothing.

Sojourn of Suffering - Day 1

In general an uneventful day. I started out taking pictures of each state, as The Mrs. decided to do some of the driving, but after two states (Colorado and Wyoming), I ended up driving.

We hit some fog in Wyoming, which is better than the Blizzard we hit in Nebraska last year. It wasn't particularly dense fog (visibility was about 1/4 mile), but it was enough to freak out The Mrs., who has apparently never driven in fog on the highway. She developed this habit of every time she got close enough to just see the back of a vehicle in front (remember- a 1/4 mile in front) she would slam on the brakes. When I queried as to why this was, she said, "I need to slow down until I determine how far away it is."

This is why it used to be illegal for women to have drivers licenses.

Only two other things of note happened on the trip.

First, shortly after I started driving in Nebraska, I passed a little red car with Colorado plates. The ladies in the car got very excited that we also had Colorado plates, so a little later, they zoomed up next to us and started waving. So I waved back.

The Mrs., naturally, was infuriated by this. She began to berate me for, apparently, hitting on girls in another car (Visions of Christie Brinkley in a red Ferrari on National Lampoon's Vacation, I imagine). Then, an SUV passed us, and The Mrs. said, "There - why don't you wave at her, too? Oh, she's fat. I see. You don't wave at the fat ones?"

Sigh.

Later, The Childrens were watching Ghostbusters on the DVD (and hating it), when The Mrs. heard the voice of Bill Murray.

The Mrs.: "Childrens, that man talking right now is named Bill Murray. He is one of the best comic actors of all time."

Me, CherkyB: "Billy Murray?"

The Mrs.: "Yes. He's a genius."