On the road...

It’s the mid afternoon of Day 3. So far we’ve driven through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and now we’re in Pennsylvania. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore. I’ve been surprised by the amount of hills and little mountains we’ve driven through. It’s incredibly beautiful, even if we are staying on the Interstate. It’s so lush and green, with hills and little mining towns, so beautifully kept. Dorian loves sitting in the front seat and I’ve become quite partial to lying around in the back seat. Here I can watch movies, read my book, listen to music and just stare outside at the scenery as we drive by. The one thing I’m really surprised at is how all this driving isn’t really causing much stress between the 3 of us. There’s so much to do and even more to see and we’ve all been relatively calm. I say relatively because driving on the outskirts of Chicago was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. A 2 hour traffic jam followed by cars racing by at 400 miles an hour in Wisconsin as we try and change lanes to get into the correct tollbooth lanes is just not fun. Yesterday wasn’t a very pleasant driving day I have to admit. Dale really loves driving and hasn’t requested a break yet even though I have asked him a number of times. He says it relaxes him and quite honestly, that’s just fine with me. I’m not very comfortable with highway driving but that’s just because for the past 5 years it’s been Dale doing the bulk of it.


Those of you who know us know that Dale and I are insane for coffee. I told Dale to bring the press (you know, those French Press thingys? Makes incredible coffee, by the way....) along on the trip with us just incase there were no coffee makers in our hotel rooms. He didn’t think we would need it. Silly man. Our room last night (wonderful hotel by the way – Quality Inn) had one of those single cup coffee makers and it made the most disgusting coffee we’ve ever had. Like swamp water. We decided to hit up McDonalds for coffee thinking it would be comparable to the coffee you can get at McDonalds back home. Yah. Not so much. It tasted like instant *shudder* (sorry Grandma). Bearing all this in mind, can you imagine how excited we became when 20 minutes into Ohio we see a Tim Horton’s sign? Dale must have crossed 4 lanes in about ½ a second to make the exit. We both wanted to kiss the lovely woman serving us even though I’m sure she thought we were a little creepy. I mean we were seriously giddy with excitement, had these freaky huge smiles on our faces and were practically hyperventilating as we asked for 3 x-large double doubles and 2 toasted bagels with strawberry cream cheese. It was an orgasmic experience really. I know those of you who share our love for coffee will agree that it was a very exciting moment for us, and will doubly agree that Tim’s is “not just coffee”. I don’t quite think Dorian understood it all but he happily drank his coffee and ate his bagel. Besides, he’s 14 and doesn’t understand the concept of a real good cup of coffee yet so he’s excused.

There is however one little technical issue we’ve been having. To save on space, we downloaded all our music onto Dorian’s i-touch and bought an FM transmitter so that we could listen to it in the car. We can’t find ANY dead air on the FM stations so we’re totally unable to use it. This has been a real drag as we have very few CD’s in the car and have to search to radio stations every few miles. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Next stop.......Ashburn, Virginia. Tomorrow we hit the National Air and Space Museum before heading into Washington, DC. We’re all super excited about the July 4th fireworks cruise along the Potomac River tomorrow night. I have a feeling that seeing fireworks over the Lincoln Memorial will be pretty powerful. I still can’t believe I scored tickets for that. What an experience.

Update:  We're here, we made it safe.  It's so beautiful here I have no words.  Maybe after we eat....LOL!!!