Day 6: Minnesota/Sioux Falls

Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

The first few days of trip were jam-packed with scheduled activities, but now we're in a lighter part of the trip where we're just trying to find enough to entertain ourselves as we travel toward Mt. Rushmore and some of the other sites I wanted to check out in western South Dakota. Since we didn't have anything planned for the afternoon, we slept in a bit and then had a buffet breakfast in the hotel.  We figured it would be a good day to get in some laundry (I had put a limit on how much clothes Allen could pack for space reasons in the car), so we found a local laundromat in Rochester.  We killed an hour or so playing War and Ms Pac-Man while waiting for the laundry to be done and then we hit up I-90 again.

We were only on the road again for another half hour or so before we decided we had to stop again.  Just off the next exit was the Spam Museum.  Located in Austin, Minnesota, the Spam Museum is THE source of knowledge about everyone's favorite canned meat product.  It also includes interactive games, a movie, and of course, a gift shop.  After about 40 minutes of Spam-intensive entertainment, we were starting to feel hungry for lunch.  So we went to Subway for some Spam-free sandwiches, and then hit the road again.

The drive to Sioux Falls took about 4 hour, and we got in around 6 pm as a rainstorm was starting up.  It was another fairly boring drive of endless fields that we've been seeing ever since leaving Chicago.  At least the music has been good throughout. Allen and I have pretty similar tastes, so we've been using one of those radio tuner accessories for our iPods most of the time instead of searching for radio stations in the middle of nowhere or replacing cd's every 45 minutes.

A lookout tower in Falls Park

We went to Famous Dave's for some bbq dinner.  As we entered the restaurant there was a heavy thunderstorm and extremely high humidity, but by the time we left the sky and humidity had cleared up and there was an interesting colorful glow in the area as sunset was approaching.  Before the rainstorm we had been planning on stopping by Falls Park in Sioux Falls to see their evening Sound & Light Show.  We got to the park around 9 pm and saw that it had already been canceled because of the rain, so we walked around and looked out at the park from the observation tower for a bit.  The park had some nice waterfalls leading into a river, and the whole area looked even better with the lighting at the time.

Miles traveled today: 255 miles
Miles traveled total: 1,603 miles
Total States Traveled: 9

Day 5: Wisconsin/Minnesota

Approaching beautiful downtown Milwaukee

We slept in a bit to recover from the late night before and made a quick stop at Walmart to pick up a bag for Allen (the zipper on his bag had broken off a couple days earlier), get some breakfast at the Subway inside, and pick up some supplies.

We had been planning on doing a tour of the Miller Brewery in Milwaukee, but based on a recommendation from a random girl who overheard our conversation at Bernie's yesterday, we decided to aim for a tour of Lakefront Brewery instead.  The drive from our hotel in Chicago should have taken 1.5 hours but was longer because of traffic from a nearby Six Flags and some construction in Wisconsin.  That was unfortunate because when we got to Lakefront Brewery, the people in front of us in line got the day's last tour tickets.  Since we were there, we decided to try some of the beers, and I found the Wheat Monkey most tasty.  We hung out for a bit, had some pizza, and then hit the road again, heading toward Rochester, Minnesota.

The 4.5 drive itself was fairly boring, mostly a lot of large, empty fields and some farms.  The one interesting part of the drive, however, was the ending of my 11 year streak of having never been pulled over for speeding.  Fortunately, I was able to muster up enough tears and sound apologetic enough and just got off with a warning.

Before leaving the state we stopped for some Wisconsin cheese at a rest stop, and then drove over the Mississippi River and into Minnesota.  We got to the Marriott in downtown Rochester at around 7 and hung out a little bit before venturing out for dinner.  Based on the area by our hotel, Rochester seems like a nice little town.  There was a live band playing outside earlier, and a lot of little shops and restaurants nearby. We ended up walking to City Cafe for dinner, which was alright.  After dinner we just took it easy at the hotel.

Miles traveled today: 371
Miles traveled total: 1,348
States traveled: 8

Day 4: Chicago

Wrigley Field in Chicago

The first couple stops on the trip were places I’ve been before (Pittsburgh, PNC Park, and Cedar Point), but today really started the newer part of my adventure. Until I get to Vegas in two weeks, I haven’t been to any of our next locations. We had a full day in Chicago planned, so this was going to be one of the few light driving days on the trip.

We set our alarm for 9 am, got ready, and since there is no free breakfast at this hotel, we made a quick stop at McDonalds around the block on the way to the L station. Our hotel is on the outskirts of Chicago, so we knew it was going to take over an hour to get in the vicinity of Wrigley Field. We took the blue line most of the way, and then switched to the red line for a few more stops before getting off by the ballpark. Having spent most of my time as a baseball fan either at Met games or Nats games, where both teams play at stadiums surrounded by parking lots and not much else, I was immediately impressed by the area around the ballpark, which was a large selection of bars, restaurants, and other shops, and there were huge crowds of people decked out in Cubs gear ready to party. We walked around a little bit, before settling on Bernie’s for a few pregame beers.

We had bought our seats in advance, and they ended up being really good. There are a lot of parts of the park which have limited visibility, but ours (section 523, a little to first base side of home plate, in the upper deck) had a great view and were in the shade the entire game. I enjoyed the throwback style of Wrigley Field, which still has a mostly manual scoreboard, very few electronics around the park, or other distractions common in newer ballparks. The game went by very quick, clocking in a little over 2.5 hours, the weather was perfect, and we saw the second Reds win of our road trip, this one a 3-0 victory.

After the game we went back to Bernie’s, and met up with two more of Allen’s Citrix coworkers for some more drinks, and I started to form the opinion that Chicago might be the drunkest city I’ve ever been in. Over the next couple hours (still mid afternoon on a weekday) we were entertained by the random girl who wouldn’t stop trying to dance with every person that walked past her, even though no one else was dancing. Later in the afternoon we also saw two random drunk old men get into a loud verbal fight, and what seemed like a young couple who worked together get into a fight of their own, with the girl yelling to the guy “If you want to fire me I don’t care!” and storming out of the bar. We stayed at Bernie’s for a little while and eventually moved down the street to Uberstein, a German style bar for some bratwurst, uberpretzels, and liter size beers. After that we met up with a few other Citrix peoples, who kept the makeshift Chicago bar crawl going, including stops at Elephant & Castle and Boss. I don’t really remember what we did at any of them, but I’m sure we had fun. And on another positive note, Allen, who has been suffering from some mild insomnia on the trip finally, found a place to get some rest. Luckily we didn’t have to switch trains on the way back, but it was another long trip back to the hotel, and we got in around 2 am.



Miles traveled today: 26

Miles traveled total: 977
States passed through so far: 6

Day 3: Cedar Point

The picture isn't blurry b/c our roller coaster was moving too fast, I'm just not that good of a photographer

We set our alarm for 7:15 and after breakfast in the hotel we checked out and headed toward Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, around 40 minutes away.  This was my second time to the park (my first was two summers ago) and Allen’s first trip to Cedar Point.  After leaving the park the first time, I considered it my favorite park, so I was looking forward to this return trip.

After buying our tickets we were allowed into the first portion of the park, but we still had about a half hour until the gates for the entire park were opened and we could go on the rides.  After a 10 am playing of God Bless America, the gates were opened and there was a mad dash by everyone who had been waiting to get to their first ride.  We were planning on going to my favorite coaster in the park Millenium Force first, but then noticed that everyone else had the same exact plan, so we stopped at Mantis first, which was right next to it and had no line whatsoever.  We hit up Millenium Force next, which already had around a 45 minute wait, but we figured that would be the shortest wait the rest of the day.  All in all we ended up going on 10 different coasters and 1 other ride in around 7 hours in the park.  None of the rides in the park were closed, and none of the lines we waited on were astronomically long, and there were even a couple times we were able to pretty much walk right up to the ride without any wait.  The weather made it another long, hot, sweaty day (I think this will be a running theme for the road trip), but it was another good trip to the park and I felt we got a lot done in the time we were there.

After searching a little while to find where we parked our car, we hit the road again around 5:30 toward Chicago.  Aside from one pitstop along the way, our next real stop was in South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame.  We looked around a little bit for a place to eat and settled on Fiddler’s Hearth, a highly reviewed Irish Pub on Main Street.  The service was kinda slow, but they had live music playing, a good beer list, and the bangers and mash platter I had was very tasty.  After the meal, we drove by the Notre Dame football stadium and took some Notre Dame and Rudy related photos.

A little before we hit Illinois we crossed over into the Central time zone and got an hour back.  I guess it’ll be a long time before I’m next in Eastern Standard Time.  We hit some traffic near Chicago, but got some good night views of the skyline as we drive through, and eventually made it to the Mariott Courtyards hotel on the outskirts of Chicago at around 11:30.

Update as of this morning: I've shaved my facial hair into a semi-chin strap.  Hideous pictures to follow.


Miles traveled today: 370
Miles traveled total: 951
States traveled: 5

Day 2: Pittsburgh

PNC Park in Pittsburgh

After a full breakfast featuring more bacon in the concierge lounge, we checked out of the hotel and walked about a mile through downtown Pittsburgh to PNC Park for the 12:35 Pirates-Reds game.  We bought tickets at the box office for seats pretty close to home plate, about half way up the section for $27. The day was brutally hot and humid, so after a couple innings we moved up to the top of the section, which was in the shade.

PNC is one of my favorite ballparks (this was my third game there, and Allen's first), but the game itself wasn't all that interesting. The Pirates hit a lead-off home run but the Reds scored the next 9 runs to take control of the game and eventually won 9-4.  After the game, we walked back through the city to the hotel to pick up our bags and car, and then hit the road toward Ohio.

It took us a around 2.5 hours to make it to The Fairfield Inn in Avon, Ohio.  We relaxed in the room for a little while before heading down the road to Mulligan's Bar and Grille for dinner.  The food was pretty decent and they had a good special on Bay Breezes, which we both ordered or some reason, before wisely switching to beers.  Knowing we have a busy day between Cedar Point and driving to Chicago we settled back into the hotel and called it a night pretty early. 


Miles traveled today: 153
Miles traveled total: 581
Total states passed through: 4

Day 1: Bacon-wrapped Quail Eggs

One day down, 19 to go.

Allen and I hit the road around 10 am for one of our longest stretches of the trip (estimated at around 7-8 hrs; most other days we're only driving 4-5).  It was a little slow in the beginning as there were some traffic delays and we had to make a gas stop, a Panera lunch stop, and two post-Panera related emergency stops all before we got out of New Jersey.  Once we hit the Pennsylvania border though the trip sped up without delays.

We got to the Mariott City Center in downtown Pittsburgh around 6:30.  Allen's baller Mariott status got us access to the concierge lounge for some snacks and drinks, but we didn't want to eat too much because we were meeting Jeff Galak and his fiancee, Roz, for dinner at Tamari, which is an asian/latin/fusion type restaurant, around 8.  The most impressive tapas we ordered were the bacon-wrapped quail eggs, which helped me complete the trifecta of me having bacon with every meal during the day.  I also had some sushi, pekking duck quesadillas, guacamole and chips, another duck side dish, and some meat skewers.  All very delicious, but we ordered way too much and I was stuffed when we left.

We said bye to Jeff and Roz, and then moved on to a bar nearby to meet up with my former Cambridge coworker Steve Blahovec who lives and works in Pittsburgh, and a couple of Allen's Citrix comrades who were currently in Pittsburgh on a project.  We met up at a bar called Church Brew Works, which used to be a church back in the day, but has been converted into a microbrewery.  Interesting ambiance, the beers were really good, it was fun catching up with Steve and the rest of the guys, we met up with some cheerleaders, and Citrix picked up the bar tab.  We made our way back to the hotel around 1:30 am, putting an end to a long first day.

Miles traveled today: 428
States traveled: 3

Final Trip Prep

I finished sorting through my stuff today and then we loaded up the car which took the better part of the afternoon.  There are still a few bags that need to be added tomorrow, but the car is definitely going to be filled to capacity, hopefully without any really visibility problems.  I'm realizing that a Honda Civic is definitely not meant to be the only vehicle used for moving apartments, especially in conjunction with a 3 week road trip and 7 nights of camping, but we'll make the best of what we have.

Earlier in the week I brought the car into the shop to get a full inspection.  Al of Al's Tire World fame recommended we replace the windshield wipers and also one of the tires b/c a bubble had formed, but said everything else was working great.  We also added an oil change to the list and did a little maintenance work on my right side mirror which has been hanging off since senior year of college, but I was pretty relived no major repair work had to be done and that Al didn't just laugh at us when we said I'd be taking the car across the country the following week.

We also tested out the tent I'll be using on the trip, which hadn't made its way out of our family attic in about 15 years.  It seemed to hold up when soaking it with a garden hose, but I'd prefer if it doesn't get put to a real test in an actual rainstorm.


Outside a bunch of other errands I had to take care of for the trip, the rest of the week was pretty busy too.  Six Flags w/ Smitty on Wednesday.  Mets game with Dad on Thursday.  The city with Orzano, Jimmy and Smitty on Friday.  Engagement party bbq on Saturday.  Extended family for dinner on Sunday. The week kinda flew by and I'm sure I forgot a lot of stuff I was planning on taking care of, but oh well.  Tomorrow I'm off to Pittsburgh.