Go west, my son!

So, after we got back onto route 70 the next morning (thank God) and out of Ohio, we entered Indiana.  Which Chaya Rachel drove all the way across (woohoo!).  And we were able to get shot glasses for both Ohio and Indiana shortly after we entered the state (we're trying to get shot glasses from every state we pass through).  What was unfortunate, however, was the fact that Chaya Rachel's dad was making us follow him.  Which became a problem after we entered Illinois, and we got pulled over by a cop for speeding, which we were only doing because we had to keep up with the van.  But he's paying for the ticket, and hopefully it won't stay on my record too long, if at all.  And the ticket finally got the guys to slow down, so it wasn't a total loss.  We also got a few trailer trucks to honk their horns for us, which made us very happy (Chaya Rachel especially)

So, we passed through Illinois (shot glass-free, unfortunately) and into Missouri, where we saw the Gateway Arch!!

We also stopped at a gas station to refill and get food, and while Chaya Rachel and I were at the checkout counter, the cashier, who had noticed that we were Jewish, thanks to the yarmulkes that her dad and brother were wearing (and he actually could pronounce the word "yarmulke", which was surprising) asked us how to say "goodbye" in Hebrew.  So we told him that it was "shalom" the same as the word "hello" in Hebrew.  Then we drove a little longer and stopped at a hotel, which had the most comfortable beds ever, although the first room we got sent to hadn't been cleaned up from the last person who stayed in it.  So the front desk gave us a different room.  The rooms had key cards, and the card reader on our door didn't seem to like Chaya Rachel very much, because it refused to accept the card when she put it in, but accepted it right off when I did it.  More proof that technology has it in for Chaya Rachel...

Late-night craziness in Ohio

So, we started out on Sunday, and took route 70 out of Maryland, through Pennsylvania, and into Ohio. Then we get a call from Chaya Rachel's dad, who tells us that he's found a hotel, and to get off the highway at exit 71. There was just one problem though: there was no exit 71 on route 70! After several more calls and much poring over the map of Ohio at a nearby rest stop, we finally determined that they were near Toledo, about 200 miles away from route 70. Now, if we had been smart, we would have told them that we would find a hotel ourselves. But we didn't. Instead, we put the address of the hotel where her dad and brother were into my GPS, Samantha, and drove up there. It took around three hours, it was almost all on back roads, and by the time we got there, it was around 1:30 AM. We went through sixteen railroad crossings, two skunk smells, and one rotten egg smell. By the time we got to the hotel, we were both really cranky and exhausted. And they thought that WE were the ones who had gotten lost, and continued to think that until we got back to route 70 and it became very clear that the road that they had been on the day before was not route 70. Being right feels good...

Edit: I spoke to someone who travels through this region fairly regularly, and we determined that this was how the guys got lost.