Road Trip Day #1 - Cleveland to Cedar Falls, Iowa

DAY 1 - Saturday, October 18, 2008


So our road trip actually began at Michelle's house on the west side of Cleveland on the night of Friday 10/17. We spent the night there, finally getting to bed at 11:30pm after re-organizing and re-packing the car. Originally, Shea's Aztek was completely full with all of her belongings, leaving absolutely no room in the back seat. But Michelle worked her spatial relations magic and miraculously cleared enough room for both mine and Michelle's luggage and one person in the back seat. I really wish I would have taken a picture of it... everything fit just perfectly.

After some restless and anxious sleep, we woke up bright and early at 5:30am Saturday morning (10/18), toasted some bagels, and hit the road! Here are our last pics in Cleveland, taken that morning:


Ohio and Indiana were really beautiful... lots of changing fall leaves. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture and I'm sad I didn't because I really started to miss those red, yellow, and orange leaves as we got farther and farther out West.

Illinois was still pretty similar, but began to get more cornfieldy. It was exciting to see Chicago again! I wish we could have stopped... hopefully we'll go back soon.


The end of Illinois and into Iowa was pretty flat and boring... lots of corn and grain. I was driving when we crossed over the Mississippi, but we didn't get any pictures of that either. :( Darn.

Shea's GPS (Carmen Garmin AKA "Bitch-Slut") took us on Route 20 through Illinois and Iowa for what seemed like FOREVER. It was slightly miserable. More twists, turns, and STOP LIGHTS than the interstate... but hey! It took us through Galena, Illinois - the home of Ulysses S. Grant! Woohoo!


We got into Shea's cousin Erin's house in Cedar Falls, Iowa around 5:30pm that night. Their family is so cute and so nice for having us. The kids are adorable. We ate Erin's delicious white bean chili for dinner and talked for hours. Erin and I bonded over our extreme organizational skills (she saw my very detailed itinerary, complete with time zone changes and average temperatures for each city).

The oddity that is TV in the Central Time Zone amazes me... you know... the whole "9/8 central" phenomenon. I was hoping to experience SNL on at 10:30pm instead of 11:30pm, thinking I'd have a better chance of staying awake through it than I normally do in the Eastern Time Zone... but we all passed out at 10pm, completely exhausted from our first day.