See the shadow to the right of the picture above? That's my finger covering the Illinois welcome sign. But we were actually there, I swear! We overnighted at a Holiday Inn in Vandalia, IL. Having run out of clean clothes, we were happy to find out that a laundry room was on-site. Unfortunately, the dryer was apparently broken, cleaning us out of multiple quarters - as well as a longer night's sleep for yours truly - before the clothes were finally ready. The front desk agent we spoke to the next morning seemed sympathetic but apparently lacked the authority to compensate us for our troubles. However, a subsequent call to the hotel chain's customer service line concluded in an amicable resolution.
We stayed at yet another Holiday Inn Express - yes, there is a pattern - just outside Columbus in a town called Pickerington. We thought we had lucked out as we apparently snagged the very last room available. The bad news was that the place was overrun by a gaggle of teenage girls who had participated in a soccer club tournament. Of course "kids will be kids", but between the yelling up and down the hall, the subsequent mess left in said hallway and the lack of responsibility the adult chaperones seemed to be taking for all of this, it was one of our least pleasant stays.
This was actually the second attempt to take a picture of the West Virginia welcome sign. The first time, while passing through the sliver between OH and PA was unsuccessful. However, we had better luck once when we reached the WV panhandle.
I'm sorry to say that there is no picture of Virginia - I fell asleep - but rest assured that we made it back.
For those of you still keeping score: 37 days, 23 states, 6550 miles...and, most impressively, zero arguments! It was quite a memorable experience for Cathy and me, to say the least. While investing this amount of time and resources in such a vacation may not be possible for all, I would certainly encourage everyone to consider taking a road trip to your destination as there may be interesting, often unexpected things to see during your journey. Certainly for a person of size, traveling by car can offer a lot more flexibility than by choosing to fly. In our case, we realized that the cost of flying to our main destinations and then obtaining a rental car would have been a negligibly small difference from our road trip.
To those who followed the entire Summer of Love tour, I hope you enjoyed the re-telling of our story as much as we enjoyed the experience. To those who joined us in the middle...you've got a lot of fun catching-up to do...what are you waiting for??? *smile*
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