---

Internet

I finally have access to the internet again, so I'm slowly trying catch up. When I'm writing this I'm actually on day 13, but I've been documenting everything in a little journal so I'll get everybody up to speed, and hopefully I won't forget anything. Well day 4 was a rather interesting day so lets continue shall we?

Day 4: Car trouble

I can't even believe how much could have gone wrong with our car and didn't.

First

when we are packing up our pop up trailer we find out that the hitch attached to the car... was no longer really attached. The bolt holding it in place fell off, and the only thing holding the hitch in place was pure friction and a wimpy chain.

Second

We found out that the battery that the car dealer gave us for the pop-up trailer was a dud.

Third

We over heated the engine because we had the air conditioning on and we were carrying a freaking pop-up trailer.

Luckily we were able to get a new bolt with a better staying on mechanism at this place in Wisconsin where there was this adorable little kitten walking around. We got a new battery. And nothing melted in the engine, and we've been very careful going up hills, and sometimes suffer through a very hot car to make sure the engine is happy.

Where's Palin?

Couple of accent notes. First, people out west know of what I call "seltzer" as "carbonated water" and admittedly, that's what it is. Although I found it interesting that not only did they call it something as if it were a thing and not a drink, it's been very hard to find places that serve it like a normal drink. A waitress looked at me like I was crazy when I said I just wanted some carbonated water. It was fun.

Another thing that is interesting is that you can almost always count on there being a pizza hut near by out here in the Midwest. Even in smaller towns, there is probably a pizza hut. Now I don't know if this is true everywhere in the Midwest, but at one of these small town pizza huts, I almost got gypped out of a slice of pizza. I didn't really care, and I wasn't all that hungry, and I love pizza hut pizza anyway.

We also passed through Minnesota today, and I noticed that a few of the people here sound a little like Sarah Palin. I wonder where she originally came from anyway.

Finally we also passed through South Dakota, where there was a plethora of billboards waiting to greet us. I hadn't seen so many since we had left PA. I'm assuming there are different laws in South Dakota allowing for more billboards per mile, but I'd want to find out more. Does anybody know anything?

Well pretty full day, but day 5 was a pretty intense day too. Hopefully I'll be able to type that up today as well.

---