Travel Log: We Made It!

As you can see from the comment on yesterday's post, my wife was up way before the butt crack of dawn and excited to get on the road today for the last leg of our trip. She was VERY nice and let me sleep in until 7:30 though. (Thank you, Sweetie!)

First thing we saw on the news when we walked into the hotel lobby for breakfast was school closures and delays.

Huh???

Did it snow???

Nope. Fog. Most of Ohio was fogged in with ZERO visibility, and all the schools were on like a 2 hour delay.

By the time we got on the road, it had cleared up enough to drive normally, but the sky was overcast. That was odd. I mean, besides the fact that I haven't seen an overcast sky since... Well over 15 months ago (unless you count the vog). Today was the first day in our trip that I haven't worn my sunglasses from the moment we stepped out of the hotel. I didn't have to put them on until about 10:30 as we drove across PA.

My favorite season is autumn. I love the leaves changing color and swirling around behind your car. I love the crisp chill in the air warning you that winter is coming.

Up until today, we've seen no signs of autumn. It's been bright, sunny, and warm all the way across country. We've worn shorts and t-shirts every day and every night.

Then we crossed the state line into PA today and it's like mother nature flipped a switch and declared "let it be autumn!" The trees were all sorts of shades of red, yellow, and orange. We stopped at a service area on the PA Turnpike to get some lunch and our teeth all started to chatter as we got out of the car in our t-shirts and shorts. Everyone else around the rest stop was wearing jeans and sweatshirts.

Our Rest Stop PT Program took a turn for the worse today. One second we were all laughing and giggling while doing our typical family race around the rest stop. The next second, YB was a crying splattered mess, crumpled in a heap on the concrete sidewalk.

I guess Crocs aren't so good for running, eh?

He was bleeding from his right knee and his left elbow, had scrapes on his other elbow and knee, and he has quite a big red lump on his forehead. He was crying for a while, but thankfully (a) our good friend Becky told him that M&M's make boo-boos feel better, and (b) we happened to have some M&M's in the car.

Too bad the M&M's don't make the snot come out of the shoulder of Daddy's shirt where said little boy was crying on it, but I guess that just comes with the territory, right?

Pet Peeve: Construction areas with really low speed limits but no actual construction work going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about saving lives and obeying the speed limit in the construction zones when those guys are out there. It just really annoys me when we have to drive slow for no actual reason.

I was really impressed in Indiana yesterday. They actually have a cool thing where the construction speed limit signs say "when blinking" and have a light that they turn on when they're actually working. Since it was Sunday, we still flew through at normal speed because nobody was actually working and the lights weren't blinking.

Today though, we went through miles upon miles upon miles of construction zones in PA with ridiculously low speed limits and ZERO work going on. It drives me nuts.

Overall, the drive went very smoothly today, and we finally arrived and laid eyes upon our new house about 4:30.

Home Sweet Home

We had to wait a few minutes for the realtor to arrive with our keys, so we walked around to check out the back yard.

...and met a couple of our new neighbors.

After we got inside, the boys explored every square inch of the house from top to bottom in about 30 seconds. I don't even think my wife and I were done receiving the keys, garage door openers, and introductory remarks from the realtor in the foyer by the time the boys had seen the entire house.

Naturally, after two weeks of being cooped up in the car, the boys ran around the house like maniacs. Our realtor seemed worried they were going to break something. (a) The house is empty, what're they gonna break? (b) It's not like we're looking at a potential house to buy that we don't own yet. We OWN IT. It's OURS. If they break it, we'll fix it.

YB found himself a perch.
(Note the SpongeBob bandaid on the right knee)

Overall first impressions: LOVE the house! It's a lot bigger in person than it was in the pictures. VERY happy overall with everything we saw in the house today.

It was funny though. Our realtor was REALLY nervous. She was WAY more nervous about our first impressions of the house than we were. I mean, what would we do if we DIDN'T like it?!?! We bought it, so it's ours whether we like it or not, right?

Then again, if you can sue McD's for the coffee being hot, I suppose...

Tonight we met our long-time close friends Corey and Vince for dinner, then went to Target to stock up on some basic stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, etc. The movers are coming to deliver our household goods (HHG) tomorrow! Hooray! We have to be there by 8 a.m. to wait for the movers though, and of course, they won't show up until like noon I bet. We'll see.

Statistics for Today:

16 Number of States we drove through in the past 16 days (OR, CA, NV, AZ, UT, (AZ again), NM, CO, KS, MO, IL, IN, OH, WV, PA, MD, VA)

4,830 Number of miles driven on our trip across country

4,831 Number of dead bugs on the front of our car. Maybe we should donate (loan) our car to some school science fair experiment and let some kid try to identify how many bugs are splattered on our car and which states they came from.

Time for a car wash.