Days 1 and 2

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DAY 1

There isn't a lot to say about the first day since we left home at 7 pm. Home for us is an eastern suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Which reminds me, I should let you know who we are and what we're doing.
My name is Jaimy and I'll be traveling with my wife and three kids. The kids are a 12 year old girl, a 7 year old boy and a 9 month old girl. We are heading out for 2 weeks of travel in the minivan to the New England States.
So, we're off at 7 PM on Saturday June 16th after I was at work for most of the day. The plan is to drive straight through to Hershey, PA and the Hershey World Factory Tour. That should be about 16 hours of night time fun. The kids settled in pretty quickly, seeing as how they have all the amenities of home. Including a Playstation Portable, DVD player, multiple MP3 players and a laptop. It didn't take long to get up to speed and set the cruise at 74 MPH. There were plenty of deer carcasses on the side of the road. And I saw a few standing around, but after a while I decided there wasn't much I could do at this speed if a deer hopped in front of me. With that revelation, I relaxed and sat back. We whipped past the money sucking goodness of Wisconsin Dells. At a blistering 74 we flew past Madison and right to the border.
Passing into Illinois is no big deal, especially at 11 pm when you're the only one awake. I drove on listening to all kinds of punk rock on the MP3 player with FM transmitter, all the way to midnight. Which brings us to...


DAY 2

Since the car wouldn't stop dinging at me I had to stop for gas. We hit a station a bit north of Chicago, 343 miles into the trip. I continued on down I294 at what must've seemed like a snail’s pace to the drivers of greater Chicagoland. I was still going 74, but they were zipping past me.
By 2 am I was too tired to keep driving. So Dondie, that's the wife, took over. There isn't a lot to see in Indiana at this time of day, so falling asleep wasn't a problem. I had a pretty fitful time of it though. I could feel every speed up and slow down and curves and that bumpy "wake up you're falling asleep and you're on the shoulder" stuff. Close to Sandusky, Ohio Dondie had to stop for gas so I took over driving again. This is 699 miles into the trip, 3 tanks of gas and 2 driver switches.
I drove on towards Hershey. Going down I76 went kept seeing signs for US Open parking lots. I was wondering why the hell anyone would need a parking lot way out in the country. Then it finally dawn on me US Open. US Open? Like the golf thing? Hmm that must be it. Turns out that it is. A bit after Bedford, PA I couldn’t handle driving anymore. We stopped at a service plaza and had some pizza before hitting the road again at 1:30pm. Dondie took over driving duties again as I climbed in back and slept a while. We hit the motel in Harrisburg at 2:30, nineteen and a half hours after leaving home.
After checking in we looked at the book with local attractions listed in it. The Hershey Factory tour is actually “A 10 minute train ride through a simulated factory”. Wait, we drove 19 hours to see a fake chocolate factory? Wait, its only10 minutes worth? After a quick family vote we decide not to hit the Hershey thing at all. We had a nice dip in the pool and then went to a local hamburger joint with golden arches. Dondie and I went down to the English style pub in the lobby where I had my first ever Yuengling. Not too shabby. Then it was back to the room and my beautiful bed.

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