midwest road trip part 1

so my mom and i set out monday morning at 5:30am from south portland, maine heading to staunton, illinois. the following is part 1 of our trip. enjoy! (i decided bullet points and photos worked best)

*maine is pretty much trees and highway, so there was nothing special about the first hour or so. i had gotten barely any sleep sunday night but my mom likes to talk so at least that kept me awake

*ezpass might be the greatest invention ever

*we stopped at dunkin donuts in mass to get some coffee (i knew that we soon would not be able to find a dunkin donuts anywhere). obviously i had to get a pic with wally!

*along some highway in western mass we saw a road sign that said: "correctional facility area. do not pick up hitchhikers". seriously wish i could have snapped a pic. i cant make this stuff up.

*this was one of the coolest/scariest things on our first day of driving. an overpass walkway to rest area. mom got a hot fudge sundae, which she spilled all over herself. i got an oreo mcflurry.

*by far one of the best buildings we passed along our trip right here

*we got to our hotel about 5:30pm and headed up to our room to drop off our stuff before heading to dinner. we realized we didnt have a fridge, so we asked if we could switch rooms. our first room had 2 beds...

*the one we switched to had a king size with fridge and we also got a jacuzzi. WIN!

* we headed to applebees for dinner where i ate cheese cheese and more cheese (in the form of a personal pizza with a mix of asiago and italian cheeses, mushrooms, brushetta, and artichoke hearts, with a side of motz sticks. yay cheese). we then found this lovely store nearby where i got some yuengling which we dont have in maine. its pretty awesome.

*i hadnt gotten much sleep in the 4 days prior to leaving so i was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. we had shut the curatins before we left for dinner so the room was pretty dark when we got back. after eating and watching a bit of the bachelorette, we decided too turn the tv off and hit the hay. i noticed a little sliver of light coming through a crack in the curtains and decided to see what it was coming from. this was the view of our room before i opened the curtain... (you can barely make out the sliver of light in the right side)

...and this is what i found after opening them

i thought it was rather ridiculous that we were going to bed when it was still light out! haha. on a side note, those curtains would be super sweet in my bedroom! apparently it stays lighter here much later than at home but doesnt start getting light in the morning til almost 6am. weird.

*this has to be the most ridiculous "do not disturb sign" ever. hahaha. me time.


*i ended up sleeping til almost 7am which was almost 11 hours. haha. thanks nyquil! i went down to the lobby to get some coffee and something to eat from the not so continental breakfast. chose some mixed fruit and oatmeal, although the line cook was trying really hard to make me waffles with chocolate chips or an omelette. my breakfast cost me $2.07, which i thought was cool since its our area code at home. the guy didnt seem to care. he was still mad i didnt have the waffles i think.

*as we were puling out of the hotel getting ready to drive on for the day, we saw the light on at krispy kreme... you know that that means! mom thought she really needed this bag... i talked her out of that one.

*i didnt know what to choose!

....so i went for just the plain hot glazed

ok, i had two.

*at a mcdonalds somewhere in ohio i got a coffee... and they gave me a quarter back from maine!

*every time we pulled off an exit to get gas the GPS lady would go nuts, telling us recalculating turn around, go back, do a u turn, do the hokey pokey... it got annoying, so i would mute her when we knew we would be getting off. once i forgot and my moms exact words were "mute that bitch:!! haha. eventually my mom named the gps "matilda".

*i think this is either right before illinois (in indiana) or right after you get into illinois, but its the biggest cross ive ever seen. this pic does no justice, but its huge!

*as we got nearer to illinois the land began to turn into corn field after corn field. lovely. at this point my mom started singing some song that went "the corn is as high as an elephants eye" over and over and over... this trip couldnt end quick enough. lucky for me, we still had over 4 hours left to go.

*with about two hours left we stopped for a quick snack at steak n shake (i was soooo healthy on this trip) where i tried sliders for the first time. i asked for please no mustard or pickles. they looked at me kinda funny. whatever. but boy were those little guys yummy! i also had french fires and an oreo milkshake.... that was not my first time having those. also very yummy!

*we did eventually make it, and my grandma was so excited to see us. stay tuned for part 2, as im sure there will be much more random crap to tell you about!! oh, and this town is like going back in time... no where have i found wireless internet, my cell phone has shady service... what did we ever do without those things?!