It's Lunchtime, So We Must Be in Ohio

Herein begins the chronicle of our recent Mother of All Roadtrips (TM). We owed the Midwestern branch of our family a visit, and decided to drive to Minnesota and back. Because we're crazy (in a good way). And because we would have had to sell at least one of our children to afford to fly.

The first step was making sure we packed everything, including children.

As proof of our insanity, we drove all the way to Chicago the first day. That's 700 miles. Six states. We packed the car the night before, and had the kids sleep in their clothes. We left home at 5:30 am to beat the worst of DC rush hour, and made it all the way to Pennsylvania before we made our first stop.

Yay! I'm so glad to be out of my carseat!


Pennsylvania was gorgeous -- it was at the peak of its fall color. The sunrise over the hills was amazing.

Ohio is a very wide state. Very, very, very wide. It felt like 80% of our trip was on the Ohio turnpike. (It was really only half.)

We took a nice long lunch break to run around and play horsie.


Of course, we had to stop a couple times for gas. There was also one eventful emergency potty break by the side of the turnpike with 18-wheelers zooming by at 70 mph, shaking the car at every pass.

I forget when exactly we arrived in Chicago -- with the time change to Central and the city traffic and the baby's hysterical screaming for the last 20 minutes, time sort of lost all meaning.


But finally, we arrived safely and were welcomed at Uncle Dave and Aunt Katie's. The safe arrival is even more amazing considering the lousy condition of our tires, which we hadn't realized before we set off. Somewhere in Pennsylvania the car started pulling to the right really hard -- we found out the next day that one tire was so thin it had a bubble right around the middle. AND WE DROVE 500 MILES ON IT. Our angels were totally working overtime, with the help of everyone who was praying for our safe journey.


So, while Mr. Pickles was at a shop getting the car checked out and then buying new tires (and paying cash for them to save $50 in taxes -- gotta love how Chicago does business), everyone else headed to a nearby park for some fun.


We had talked about doing something touristy, like visiting a museum downtown, but it worked out better this way. We were all seriously tired after our long day, and having one day just to relax and play was what we really needed. I don't think it was so relaxing for Dave & Katie. :) (I wonder if their cat Moxie will ever recover.) But we had a lovely time with them and promised to invade them again soon and break more of their toys.

The next day we drove the rest of the way to Minnesota. We don't have any pictures from that leg of the journey, so nothing interesting must have happened. Only one thing stands out about that trip for me -- Wisconsin is a very big state. That, and I think we missed a toll somewhere in Illinois. We tried to pay online later, but the website was extremely confusing (probably on purpose). I hope they let us back in the state so we can terrorize Moxie again.