Today was a very big driving day! Bigger than I realized when I was planning! I drove through Maryland, West Virginia (twice!), Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and am now in Illinois. I haven't really been keeping track, but I'm pretty sure I've never crossed that many states in one day before! Accomplishing this meant that I drove right around 600 miles, I know I've never gone that far in one day in the RV before!
Both of these milestones are actually the result of a planning mistake! When I was thinking about my route and looked at the map I realized I could plan around a few parks I'd been to in 2013 when I drove to Colorado. When I google mapped the distance from Rocky Gap to Kickapoo, I didn't consider that the route it showed me was different from how I intended to go. I knew how to get here, I just wanted a number! Google maps routed me on the PA turnpike - The turnpike is not a fun road to drive and they charge you for the experience so I went 68 to Morgantown and then up 79 to Washington and got 70. This added about 50 miles, not a big deal usually, except that I was already planning a 550 mile day!
Luckily the weather mostly cooperated. The last time I drove this route was the worst driving day ever thanks to several big storms. Today was much better! I did run into a lot of rain from Dayton all the way to Illinois! It was raining like crazy, but it wasn't windy or storming, just pouring rain! Funny, it rained like crazy last time I drove through Indiana. Given the choice of 20 miles of bumper to bumper traffic or 150 miles in a monsoon, I'd take the monsoon.
One exciting thing I did today was listen to an audiobook while I drove! (I'm such a nerd!) I read a lot of books, but listening to an audiobook is very hard for me, my brain wanders and the book keeps going and it's hard to go back and re-read. I'd thought that the mind numbing boringness of the 1000 mile flats might be just the place to try again with an audio book! My local library has Overdrive where you can borrow audio & ebooks so before I left I downloaded a book and started listening to it once I got into Ohio. At first it was hard to stay focused on both the road and the book, but once I got into the story I was good to go! I picked a thriller novel so it has a predicable structure and it's a fairly straight forward story. And, it's really good! I can't wait to read the others in the series (it's a Kate Burkholder novel by Linda Castillo) I listened to it for about 4 hours and really enjoyed it, although it was work to stay focused on the book and not let my mind go! My brain was relieved when I put the music back on! I'm excited to think that maybe I can devour books while I drive, especially on these long cross country drives!
It took me 11 hours to drive the 600 miles, I only stopped a few times and not for longer than 30 minutes, so once I reached Kickapoo I was ready to get out! After dinner I took a long walk in the campground and managed to get all 10,000 steps! woot! woot! And guess what? It's breezy and cool! No need for AC, again! :-) LOVE IT!
I've enjoyed coming back to familiar campgrounds and driving familiar roads, but tomorrow I will cross into uncharted territory! After I survive driving the rest of Illinois...
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