Today began with the typical hotel breakfast, a stop at CVS for waters, a stop at Starbucks for Mom and I, and we were on our way! As yesterday's blog mentioned, we didn't have that far to drive today. About 2 hours into the drive, I decided I had to pee. Gideon was also hungry. So I looked up restaurants along the highway and found a place called Lost in Taste . It was a space-themed sports bar that looked pretty good and had decent reviews. We popped off the highway and headed in.
The place wasn't all that busy, and there was only one waitress. The decor was somehow, on point. Both diner and space all in one. It was pretty cool looking. All the menu items had cute space themed names, too. And the bathroom had some funny (and classic) signs.
It was generally a good experience except for Mom's onion rings which tasted like Dial gold threw up on an onion ring. In (good? bad?) news, our bodies are now bacterialess.
After that we were but an hour away from our favorite stop on every road trip: a drive through zoo that allows you to feed the animals. And by mere happenstance me and Mom (the two most scared feeders) were in the front seat together. Joys. It was just as expected, but I will provide a few key moments.
1. A llama spit at his brother right next to Gideon's window cause they were fighting over his food.
2. An emu spread his wings and ran at our car top speed. Mom broke the speed limit and drove away.
3. A llama kept popping in and out of my window about 10 times and every time I didn't realize he had popped in until I looked over and he was IN MY FACE… lots of screaming was involved.
And if you don't yet believe how chaotic it was, here is the grime that was left on the car door as proof.
Needless to say there was animal feed all over the car, and a 5 minute clean-up ensued. We hit up the restrooms and gift shop, booked a hotel and were on our way for the night! The hotel was only 30 minutes away, but somehow we got caught in what seemed to be a tornado on the way there. Not actually, obviously, but the winds were high and the visibility was none. All semis pulled over immediately. I put my headphones on and closed my eyes. Except for one moment in which Mom flipped off the space beside the passenger side of the car where no other car was present. I assumed there was someone coming up beside her she didn't like, so when the next car came up I flipped it off. Turns out Mom was just flipping off the rain and I assaulted some random woman.
Anyway, we made it to the hotel and unpacked all our things from the trunk. Check-in was taking suspiciously long, but I wasn't worried about it. Until I was and the receptionist told us to sit down because she'd be a minute. Then she checked some other guests in and we were sure we would be pushed out due to overbooking. But another lovely woman came around and got us rooms (albeit ones on different floors) in about 10 minutes. A little inconvenient, but it is what it is.
I used our time in the hotel to reorganize and begin blogging for the day before we headed out to dinner. We decided to double up on diners and stop by a 50s diner called Wright's Dairy Rite. The prices were so cheap, and you had to order from these corded phones. It was definitely something new but it turned out to be really cool! And the milkshakes were lovely.
After dinner we drove around for a bit hoping to find a neighborhood in which Gideon could drive some, but came across only hilly narrow roads. I'd tell you more of the story, but I stopped paying attention to what was going on when Gideon began reading out every bible verse he heard and saw referenced. Headphones were in and noise cancelling was on.
We gave up on Gideon being able to drive and headed back to the hotel, working on chemistry or homework while watching Gossip Girl for the evening.
Nice Deed of the Day: Mom wrote a great review for the escape room we did recently!