Roadtrippin

What a fabulous trip. The pictures I posted do no justice for the sights we saw on our journey. People keep asking us what our favorite part of the trip was and we really don’t have an answer. The fact of the matter is, every single part of our trip was our favorite (well, maybe not the driving through Oklahoma and Pennsylvania).

On our first day back, we slept in, worked on unpacking, did laundry, cleaned the fish tanks, got the car washed, took the 32 out for a ride (Eddie really missed his car) and are now getting ready to smoke some sausage on the grill (Eddie really missed his grill too).

It was a little hard to get adjusted to being back home. All my calendars were still on the month of July, my dvr is full and it’s really humid here! I was enjoying the dry heat and never thought I’d be okay with going outdoors when the thermometer said 115°, but I was. I also had hard a hard time following the speed limit. We’ve been used to 75-70mph speeds and now we’re back to 55-40. I think Eddie really enjoyed that part too!

Some might be surprised to know that Eddie and I actually spent the entire day together. Even after spending 23 days together 24/7, we still wanted to do things together when we got home. While we spent a large portion of our time confined in the interior of the car, we enjoyed each other’s company. We listened to a 13.5 hour Stephen King book on tape, played road trip games that I found on the iTunes App Store and talked about our future. Surprisingly, there were only a few times that Eddie threatened to leave me on the side of the road; a lot less than most of you would have thought, huh?!

All in all, we are so thankful to have had the opportunity to take this trip. We had the time of our lives and we look forward to the next adventure together. One last piece of advice; when you or your family plans your next next trip, please follow Eddie’s mantra, Go big or go home. I never would have imagined I’d ever take a trip of this magnitude, but Eddie made sure that we did and saw everything I could think of. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better life partner than him. I was hoping to win big in Vegas so we wouldn’t have to return to work tomorrow, but I know I’ve already hit the jackpot by marrying the love of my life. (I’m not saying the $$ wouldn’t have been nice too, though 🤣🤣)

Thank you all for following our honeymoon. Stay tuned for more travel blogging in the future. ❤️

Statistics from the trip:

23: Number of days on trip

13,246: Mileage on car when we left

20,162: Mileage on car when we returned

6,916: Total mileage driven

$1,128.19: Total spent on gas

$1,166.00: Average cost for round trip airfare from LGA to LAX for 2 people (doesn’t include all the fun stops in between)

346.218: Total gallons of gas purchased

$3.25: Average cost per gallon of gas

19.9: Average mileage per gallon

3: Gallons of bug windshield washer fluid used

16: Number of states driven through

3: Number of timezones driven through

35 – 34: Score of the punch buggy game (Annie won!!!!)

9: Number of cacti we brought home

10: Number of souvenir shot glasses Annie bought on trip

2: Number of fully intact, headless grasshoppers we found in the grill of my car (can produce pics if anyone is interested)

Countless: Number of bugs who committed suicide on the front of the Tahoe

4: Number of loads of laundry done since returning

0: Number of things we would change if given the opportunity to redo the trip

Infinite: Number of memories made on this trip

We are home and ready for bed!

I’ll post my final thoughts tomorrow.

I don’t know where we are in Pennsylvania. I’m pretty sure we are both delirious from being in this state ALL day. I’ve been dreaming about my bed all day. There’s a chance we won’t even unpack the car tonight and just climb right into bed. Honestly, anything could happen at this point. We still have to deal with the tri-state area, if we ever get there!!

We checked into a hotel in Cambridge, OH. We are tired. We’re now 8 hours away from home and after a goodnights sleep, we’ll tackle the worst part of our traveling- PA, I-95 and the tri-state area. Ugh!

We hit rush hour traffic as we approached Indianapolis. We decided to stop for dinner to pass the time while traffic cleared up. I told Eddie since it was technically our last night, (we plan to get home tomorrow night) I wanted a fancy dinner. I hopped on yelp and found a place that had stellar reviews.

Of course the place I picked was dead smack in the center of downtown Indianapolis (on a Friday night). I have the tendency to pick fantastic restaurants that have ridiculous parking situations, as was the case tonight. We had to pull into a parking garage that just barely fit my truck. In order to access the restaurant, we had to take a ramp, an escalator, enter a hotel and exit out a back door and another escalator until we got to the entrance. Little did we know this was only one of many mazes we would have to navigate throughout the evening.

Dinner was fabulous. The yelp reviews were spot on and I plan to add mine to the mix as well. I may have mentioned to the hostess that we were on our honeymoon and we were provided top quality service. Our waiter, Alexander, took the time to go over menu options, highlighting the items they were well known for. Once Eddie and I each settled on the surf and turf, Alexander allowed us to customize it, Eddie’s with a larger steak and mine with a different topping.

Eddie started off with some oysters while I had a Caesar salad. His oysters were huge and came with a really good house-ground horseradish. My salad came with a giant piece of Asiago cheese on top, so it was pretty perfect. The homemade Caesar dressing was delicious.

The waiter came to clear our appetizer dishes and in place left us each a dish with a rolled up hot washcloth with a lemon on it. We stared at each other for a few minutes waiting to see what the other was going to do. After a brief stare off, we admitted that neither one of us knew what the heck to do! I immediately texted my sister and brother in law, but they took too long to respond. I poked my cloth with a fork to see if there was anything else in it. I finally decided to google it, and as I began, I caught Eddie squeezing the lemon on his hand and wiping his entire face with the hot cloth. Turns out, you’re supposed to squeeze the lemon on the hot cloth and use it to clean off your hands to get rid of the fishy smell left by raw seafood. We had a really good laugh about the whole thing!

Dinner arrived in a timely fashion and the presentation on the plate was beautiful. The cuts of meat were very thick. It’s very hard to prepare that shape of steak the way I like it. I prefer mine cooked medium-well, or as Eddie pronounces it, ruined. My steak was cooked perfectly. Eddie prefers to get his steak partially mooing and his was perfect as well. In fact, his was so tender and juicy he was able to cut it with a butter knife.

Alexander surprised us after dinner with a slice of cheesecake. This was no ordinary cheesecake. The top half of it was creme brûlée’d and had some blueberries and homemade blueberry sauce drizzled on it. At first bite, we both knew cheesecake had been ruined for life. The ONLY way to eat cheesecake should be if it’s half creme brûlée’d. Luckily this restaurant has another location in Cincinnati, OH which is only 10 1/2 hours away from home.

We left dinner with our bellies full and our hearts happy. To top it all off, traffic had cleared up! We got back on I-70 to continue our journey home.

At this point, I was driving and Eddie was navigating. He told me that I was about 20 minutes away from the border of Ohio and that there was heavy traffic. I immediately turned on Waze for assistance. After 30 painstakingly long minutes creeping at 2mph, we managed to get the 3/4 miles to the nearest exit. Before getting too far into waze’s directions, Eddie and I switched seats so I could do the navigating.

Waze had an awesome detour picked out for us, or so we thought. We knew we had to be doing the right thing because we had a car in front of us and another behind us. Waze’s detour was going great until she tried to put us back on a stretch of highway that was still closed due to the construction. We continued the follow the guy in front of us who was also following Waze to see if it would reroute us again. She did. The only problem was her new route involved turning around and going back into the 20 mile long traffic jam of tractor trailers.

I finally turned off Waze and began navigating using the map on my phone. With a giant almost-full moon above us, I proceeded to guide Eddie through back roads, dirt roads, cornfields and places where we thought for sure aliens or werewolves were going to pop out at any minute. Somehow I managed to get us out of Indiana and into Ohio and eventually back on I-70. It was definitely tense for a while, but we made it!

I’m not sure if we’re going to make it to our initial goal of Pennsylvania because we lost a lot of time in traffic and backroads. We might just end up staying somewhere in Ohio but I’ll keep you all posted.

Last night was a LONG night. A few hours after we checked into our hotel, and shortly after we fell asleep, we got rocked with a pretty huge series of thunderstorms. I don’t think I’ve ever heard thunder that loud before. The lightening was flashing like crazy through the curtains. I barely slept because I was so scared. Eddie also didn’t sleep much because I kept waking him up. I am so lucky to have him. I would have been a train wreck if I was alone during that.

After multiple cups of coffee from the hotel breakfast bar, we checked out of the hotel to continue our drive home. Since we’re still on vacation I asked Eddie if we could stop in Cuba (MO) to get our passports stamped. The place was called Fanning Outpost General Store and it has a unique attraction on the property. How many of you can say you’ve seen the worlds largest rocking chair? Eddie and I can!

After leaving Cuba we drove back through St. Louis, MO. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing that arch. It really is a beautiful site.

We crossed the border into Illinois and stopped in Pocahontas, IL to get gas and use the bathroom. Across the street from the gas station (which had a video poker gaming room in it) was a bar/lounge called Lucky Jacks. I told Eddie we should stop in there to rest for a few. They also had a gaming room which I immediately went into. I didn’t really win anything in Vegas, (who does?) so I figured I’d try my luck in Pocahontas, IL. Turns out I had way better luck there and walked out $255 richer! It was definitely worth the stop!

Now we’re back on the road again. The goal is to get into PA tonight and complete the rest of the drive tomorrow. We are looking forward to having Sunday to catch up to the time zone, unpack, do laundry, get the truck washed, etc before going back to work on Monday morning.

I forgot to post a bunch of gas fill-ups for those of you who are keeping track.

-Chevron in Albuquerque, NM. 1/4 tank remaining. $3.019 per gallon. Total- $53.09, 17.585 gallons.

-Valero in Shamrock, TX. Less than 1/4 tank remaining. $2.909 per gallon. Total- $57.39, 19.730 gallons.

-Loves in Joplin, MO. 1/8 tank remaining. $2.799 per gallon. Total- $56.26, 20.101 gallons.

-BP in Pocahontas, IL. Little more that 1/4 tank remaining. $3.199 per gallon. Total- $$53.37, 16.683 gallons.

We just checked into our hotel in Rolla, MO for the night. The whole ride here we were starring at the moon. It was a full corn moon tonight and it was beautiful. I tried to take a pic but the pic doesn’t do it any justice. The real thing was glorious in person. I hope everyone got to see it tonight.

I’m starting to get really sad heading back home. I know it’s time to get back to reality, but I’m truly having the best time of my life on this adventure with the love of my life. ❤️

We stopped in Tulsa to go to the official Route 66 Harley-Davidson. It was huge! They had a large selection of clothing and an even bigger selection of bikes. Somehow we managed to walk out of there with only 2 shirts, a shot glass and a poker chip for one of our friends.

After Harley, we went to dinner. I promised Eddie BBQ and after half the day yelping, I found a place that looked good. It was called the Knotty Pig. The food was delicious! They also had a pickle bar filled with homemade pickles (That was my favorite part)!

For every drink purchased, you got a free shot glass. I’m now the proud owner of a set of 3 Knotty Pig shot glasses. We also bought a bunch of their homemade BBQ sauce because it was really good. Eddie is already thinking about all the meat he’s going to smoke on his smoker when we get home.

We’re back on the road now and almost out of Oklahoma. I think we’re going to stay somewhere near St. Louis, MO tonight. We lost 2 hours driving through time zones yesterday and we lose another one tomorrow in Indiana. We’re both not quite sure what time it really is and our body clocks are even more confused. For the record, I think timezones and daylight savings are stupid. I don’t get why all of the states can’t follow the same clock.

There is NOTHING in this state!! We are trying to keep occupied by trying to pronounce all the town names from the highway signs. We decided we’ll never live in this state because we can’t pronounce anything!

Enjoy the pics I took in Oklahoma. 🤣

We stopped in Albuquerque for dinner. Eddie requested Mexican so I yelped a few places before deciding on which one to go to. the place I picked was called Mariscos Altamar and it was delicious! Plus, you can’t go wrong with $5 happy hour margaritas!

After dinner, I drove again. I had started out driving this morning and then we switched halfway. Our goal was to get to Amarillo, TX tonight so I knew I needed Eddie to drive again once it got dark out. I have a hard time seeing in the pitch black desert.

As soon as I started driving, Eddie fell asleep. Shortly after I kept myself busy by watching a glorious rainbow that had appeared. It looked like there may have been a storm that passed and the sun was setting behind me. I was tempted to wake Eddie up to show him because it was so beautiful but I let him sleep.

Little did I know that that rainbow was not caused by a storm that just passed but by a storm that I was driving right into. It was very eerie. The sky was dark blue (with the rainbow at the bottom) and then it started to change to a weird apocalyptic orange color. By now, I had woken Eddie up because I was getting nervous. I continued driving until I couldn’t handle the random lightening strikes.

We pulled over so we could switch seats. I quickly snapped a panoramic pic of the sky. I’m hoping to blow it up to frame. One end of the sky was clear blue with sun. The other end turned dark and creepy and then into a giant rainbow. Craziest sky I’ve ever seen.

For the next 2 hours Eddie drove as I cried, whined, panic attacked, etc as the sky illuminated before our eyes. Somehow I managed to get a pic of some sideways lightening. I wasn’t looking at it (trust me), I was just holding the camera button down to see if I’d catch it. I caught a bolt which Eddie was impressed by.

We finally got out of the storm and made it to Amarillo for the night. I’m physically exhausted. Panic attacks really wear you out. Tomorrow we’re off to Missouri. Hoping to eat BBQ tomorrow night.