Adam's Blog July 6th, Day 1!

Started out this morning with the hopes of getting to just outside of Chicago to make the morning tomorrow much easier and since there wasn't anything on this part of the trip, it seemed long but feasible. The going was easy for a long stretch of the run and we were even able to stop for a cache in each state at a rest area along the way. Lots of pretty hills and valleys to see as we went as well. Then came Pennsylvania. Not only is the state just really long to traverse east to west, I think they were doing a psychological experiment on the effects of having a lot of space available to travellers but only letting them travel in less than half of them. Lots of traffic, lane shifts and extra narrow roads with semis heading in the opposite direction travelling just a couple of feet away. I can tell that this is troubling Courtney. Meanwhile the kids are starting to get restless and here is where the first of the "Are we there yet?" comes.

Part of the way through this disaster of the highway, we grab lunch at a Sonic. Always nice to stop at a place that serves chilli dogs. While I was tempted to get a shake, I decided to not be a total slob since I had put in all of the effort in reducing my waistline. Don't get me wrong, I have no illusion that I'm going to get out of this roadtrip at anywhere near the same weight but that doesn't mean that I need to throw gasoline on the fire. We order Gideon the grilled cheese at his request. A little background here. We have been having such trouble getting this kid to eat a meal lately. He will eat like three to four bites of the food we provide him and ask if he can be done and then we need to fight with him to eat more. Here he proves that he can eat just fine. He ate the whole flipping sandwich, except for the crust! We get the kids some drinking ice cream, aka milkshakes, grab a near by cache and head back on our way. It's still another couple of hours before we get out of Pennsylvania.

We finally get to Ohio and at this point I know that there is no way that we making it as far as I had hoped but oh well, I'll blame Pennsylvania. Part of the way through Ohio we realized that we could have Checkers for dinner, or Rally's as they are branded there. So we find the closest one that's on the route and head out get ourselves some nice greasy dinner. Two of the places we wanted to make sure to eat at down already on the first day, not a bad start. We stop by a decrepit looking strip mall with the only operating business being a dollar store, a common fixture in Ohio both the broken down strip mall and the dollar store, to grab a cache and are back on our way again. Nothing exiciting to really report until we enter Indiana. Big rain storms start rolling in and I can tell that Courtney is getting nervous about them. We are talking about true midwest downpours where the rain hits the car so hard it sounds like it's hailing. We get through these and pull in to the hotel we had decided to stay at for the night, get a room and head in. Don't worry, the day isn't over yet.

After getting the room setup for the kids to sleep and having the AC on for a while to get the room cooled down, I start plugging the electronics to charge while Courtney continues to put the kids down. I pass by the front of the AC and it felt like I stepped in a rain puddle. My sock is now really wet and I realized that the AC was leaking all over the floor. Time to make a decision, do we just live with it for the night or move rooms. We opt to live with it rather than move everything we already unpacked so I take one of the towels, fold it up and push it under the AC to help absorb it. We lay down and get ready to go to sleep when Gideon asks for something, I can't recall what at this point and Courtney gets up. Now we realize that the leak is worse than we had expected because the towel is already saturated and the floor is getting even more wet. Alright, let's move rooms. After dragging most of the stuff between rooms and my trying to move large bags in both hands with pants that are too big for me and are falling around my ankles down the hall (Yes, I was shimmying down the hall with my pants around my ankles) we get everything back in the room and everything setup again and go to bed. First long day is done.

Next Day!