Travel Tuesday: The Roadtrip From Hell ...

.... but it didn't start out that way.  

The trip was supposed to be simple.  Drive from Chicago to Cleveland and Cleveland to Maryland.  12 hours total drive time.  Not hard.  Unless you are me and Heather. 

First, we got 50 million phone calls from people saying not to go through Cleveland because it's supposed to snow really bad.   Fabulous.  We already had a non-refundable hotel there.  Well, we decided to go there anyway ... except we put home in the GPS and didn't check the GPS route. 

The GPS had us going South through Indiana instead of straight across and we realized it three hours into the trip.  So, like it or not, we weren't going to Cleveland.   Other than that disappointment the trip was actually pretty easy.  We stopped for dinner around 8 and switched seats (Heather drove the first part).  

We didn't have any issues until around midnight when we got to the Columbus area.  At this point we were just planning to drive straight through and get home around 5am.   The weather had other plans for us.   Right when we hit Columbus it started getting really windy and slightly snowy.  Poor little Tin Can (that's Heather's car) was not doing well in that so we decided to stop for a few hours to sleep and let the salt trucks do their thing ... this is when it got bad.

Enter Hotels.com.  The bane of my existence that night.  I had always had good experiences with H.com until that night.  So, we wanted something close and cheap since we were only planning on sleeping for maybe 4 hours. I went online and found a room at red roof that had a room with two beds for $35.  While red roof was less then ideal, we didn't care at that point, so I booked it in the parking lot.

You would think that since it was available online that the room would actually be available.  We'll you'd be thinking wrong.  No, I walked in and the lady looked up my reservation and says, well I have it here but we only have king bed rooms available, so if you just call H.com and tell them to change the booking, we can get you in a room.  Ok, no big deal.  UNTIL h.com tells me that I have to pay the additional cost of the room!

OH HELL NO!  I flipped out!  There was no way in Hell I was paying an extra $40 because of their mistake.  Needless to say, I was not happy!  I gave up trying to talk to the lady on the phone because she hardly spoke English and I was just tired and over it!

I did write a nice little letter when I got home and they did actually give me credit for the extra that I paid.  So now I'm not as irritated as I was.   Moving on.  We slept til about 5am and headed out again.  This is where it gets interesting.

Ohio and West VA were pretty much uneventful.  It was a bit snowy but nothing too crazy. 

Then PA.  Oh PA, if I never see you again it will be too soon (funny because I live 5 mins from the border).   We were looking at the GPS and it was telling us to go south into Baltimore then back up to Bel Air.  WHY?  No.  We decided to look at Google maps and see if there was a better way.  And there was ... so we thought.

We got to the road that was supposed to go straight across from the Pittsburgh area to Harrisburg then straight down to HarCo.  Well, silly Google maps forgot to tell us that the road we were headed towards was the fricken turnpike!!  The exit we were supposed to get off on would have cost us $17!!

Ugh.  So, the GPS tells us to get off on an exit a few miles down which only costs $2.  Whatever, we decide to just follow the stupid GPS.  Which worked fine until we decided to stop at Sheetz for some food.  It was snowing and we had to go over a Mountain.   Well, that ended up not being too bad.  Until it had us turn on some random dirt road!

 It took me an hour to go 2.4 miles because it was so hilly and curvy.  We seriously thought we were going to die.  Oh, fun fact about PA?  They don't like to plow their roads!  We were seriously sweet talking her car, "good tin can, don't die tin can".   So, after we got off the scary road and after another few miles we finally end up on Highway 68 and it was smooth sailing from there, thank goodness!  I don't think our nerves could have taken much more!

We were never so happy to see this Maryland sign!  and salt covered roads!  I think Heather may have a picture of the scary dirt road, if she does then I'll post it.

We were on the road for a good 24 hours between the time we left Chicago and the time we pulled up at my Mom's house.  Even looking back now I find some of this kind of funny, but we definitely didn't find it funny then!

And that is the story of our road trip from Chicago to MD.

Christmas in NYC

In 2008, my friend Kristin and I took a bus trip up to NYC to see NYC at Christmastime.  Her Mom, Aunt and Cousin went too and we stayed with them for a bit but mostly headed out on our own.  The bus ride to NYC from HarCO is about 3 hours.  We were lucky and didn't hit much traffic (we left super early) and made it in almost exactly 3 hours.

We started off by Radio City Music hall before heading towards Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas Tree.   I had heard it was huge but my God, that thing is ridiculous!  I am definitely glad we came to see it!  Our next stop was time square where we ran into the Naked Cowboy.  We also checked out some awesome stores including Toy's R Us, which was obviously the best thing ever.  The last place on our list was Central Park which we had a great time exploring.  We totally wanted to do a horse and carriage ride but the price was just a little too high for us at the time!  We ended our time in NYC by seeing the tree at night.

Us with the Naked Cowboy ... Duh

 

Random pic from Lunch.  Yes we ate at McD's ... we were broke haha

 

Travel Tuesday: Chicago

This is my first Travel Tuesday post!  I really hope to keep up with posting my past travels!

Chicago, IL

In 2004 the youth group at my church went on a missions trip to Chicago, IL to work with a group called Jesus People USA (JPUSA).  What a great organization!  We went over the summer, though I cant remember what month anymore, for a week.  Part of that week involved a road trip!  Yes, we drove from MD to IL.  We stopped somewhere around Sandusky, OH for sleep. 

When we got there, it was not what I expected.  It was in a bad neighborhood in a run down building. I had never really been in a city before (except Baltimore but we only went to the harbor) so it was kind of a culture shock for me.  I didn't grow up privileged but not as bad off as a lot of the people we were working with.  Until that point I didn't realized how bad poverty was in America. This was a huge learning experience for me and majorly put me out of my comfort zone.  I don't remember any series of even or anything because I didn't keep a journal on this trip (my only regret) but I can remember some experiences.

One of the things our youth pastor had us do was go to a clothing store that was like Good Will but only for clothing.  We had to find the best outfit we could for $5 or less.  When we got back to where we were staying we had a fashion show and voted on the best outfit.  I think a girl named Christina won, but I really can't remember.

Winner

Girls from my room

Another thing we were doing was putting rubber tire shreds down on the playground that the kids from JPUSA use.  They wanted that instead of mulch because it is safer.  The day we were supposed to do it we had a problem, there was still wire in the tire pieces so we had to wait for a delivery the next day.  When that finally came we got to work.  I remember we counted the buckets by this one black bucket (the others were white).  I don't remember how many buckets we passed through our line but we did reach 100 and got a picture.

Picking through the bags ... we gave up shortly after this

Right after the new tire pieces were delivered

100th Bucket

Our Group with Bucket #100, I'm in the white holding the bucket

I only remember a few other random things. One being an assignment given to us by my youth pastor.  We had to go up to the top floors of the building, knock on some doors and hang out with some elderly people.  We went in groups of three or four.  I went with my friends Liz, Brittney and Christina.  The first door we knocked on was unsuccessful, we got yelled at but the second guy was a man named Lenny.  He was the sweetest guy and he had a HUGE doll collection and so many stories to go along with them.  It was a good learning experience for me because before that I had a hard time talking to elderly people that were not my family. This experience helped me out big time in Europe (more on that later). We also helped the kitchen people cook and do other odds and ends around the building.  One more that I can remember was going to a halfway house that JPUSA runs and helping to clean.  4 of us got to go do that and the others stayed and helped out at the main building.

On the last night I remember going into the city of Chicago and seeing the Sears tower and some other sights and eating some deep dish pizza.

The Leaders and Our Youth Pastor

 Last few pics

Walking from our place to the main building

Our place that we stayed in

That is all I have for Chicago, like I said, my only regret was not keeping a journal so I could remember the trip better almost 10 years later.