Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Driving across the country Day 1

I started my drive from the suburbs of Philly to my new home of Butte, MT yesterday morning. My dad and I are making the four or five day drive across the U.S. in a u-haul truck with my rav 4 following behind on a car trailer. Driving through PA I noticed a lot of cars and pick up trucks pulled over on the side of the turnpike, but not on the shoulder, they were on the grass and sometimes up hills. I was told that it was the first day of deer hunting season in PA and those cars were probably hunters who were in the woods. I even saw one hunter standing in the back of his pick up wearing a bright orange jacket and holding his rifle. He was also very close to a rest stop so that was quite an odd sight, for me at least. And one thing I have decided I dislike about rest stops is they discriminate against trucks. The parking for them is so far from the actual building. Not a fun thing when it's cold. At the first stop we made a guy came up and knocked on our window asking for a pen. He also told us to bundle up because it's a cold walk. He was right. Now I know there is lots of historical stuff to see in PA for anyone who ever drives through it but personally I think if you are planning a ride on the PA turnpike you should stop and see the world's largest big mac. I unfortunately don't have the time to make stops on this trip but if anyone ever checks out this attraction let me know how it is. I think it's exit 67 or somewhere around there on the PA turnpike.
Next we drove through Ohio and this turnpike made me think, "where is the toll money going in PA" Ohio has brand new rest stops all along their turnpike. They are super nice and even have good food options in them like Panera. PA on the other hand has lots of old buildings with lots of junk food options. I'm sorry but when I'm driving for four or five days I just can't eat junk food continuously. ( I don't know how healthy Panera is but it just seems like a better option than Burger King) There's was really nothing else worth mentioning in Ohio plus a lot of the drive was in the dark. On to Indiana...I was not impressed with their toll system. First their tickets don't give as much info on them as Ohio and Pennsylvania for example exits and how much they cost. It listed random cities not exits. Then once we got to where we were staying for the night and had to get off the toll road the only way to pay was this self pay machine. Boy did that clog up traffic trying to get off. Probably because no one knew how to use it. If you've ever been to another city and tried to use their metro or subway system it's kinda like that. Trying to figure out the machine to get tickets with. It takes a while. And when you have a line of people in cars and trucks trying to figure this out it really holds up traffic. The other problem for us was that there are 2 heights on these machines : car height and semi truck height. Well a u-haul is in between the two and there's no easy way to reach either height in a u-haul, you basically have to get out. That just holds up the line even more. Another thing, as soon as we reached Indiana ez-pass turned into i-zoom. The signs said they still accepted ez-pass and something called i-pass. This made me think, "why can't there just be one name for this thing" On a plus side tho the hotel in Indiana was nice. First off I love hotel pillows because they are so fluffy but this hotel was also nice enough to offer free popcorn and free warm cookies and milk after 8 p.m. How nice!

2 comments:

  1. Ohio rules! Indiana and PA drool! haha

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  2. Mel! I just wrote a huge comment to you and then it dissappeard! So I am going to try to post this before I type it again! haha

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