So Many Cities, So Little Time

In one week I've managed to visit eight cities! How crazy is that? I left St. Louis last Sunday morning, then arrived in Wauwatosa, then went to Milwaukee, then spent an afternoon in Chicago and later that night drove to Toledo, then stayed in Pittsburgh Thursday night, then spent a night in Syracuse and finally Wells, ME! I arrived in Maine safe and sound yesterday evening and I'm already having a great time!! But let's go back and talk about the end of my road trip first...

So I was in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa with Erin at the beginning of the week, then Wednesday morning I drove down near Chicago to meet up with Filip aka Flip and spend the afternoon seeing as much of Chicago as is possible in one afternoon. We did pretty well actually with seeing lots of good stuff. We went to Millennium park and found a shiny bean sculpture, probably the most random but also most awesome thing to find in the middle of a park. We also went out to Navy Pier after wandering around and coming across a few dead ends to get there and eventually giving in and taking a taxi for a 5-minute ride. We also, as was absolutely necessary on my first visit to Chicago, got a true deep dish Chicago-style pizza! Absolutely, without a doubt, the best pizza I've ever had and totally worth staying in Chicago longer than planned to wait for the pizza to be baked to perfection. Oh, and by the way, it was totally awesome to hang out with Fil again after a few years have gone by since the last time I saw him. His goofy voices and accents entertained me while we sat in crazy traffic in and out of the city. I also got to hear the new album Fil is nearly finished recording! He'll be famous someday and I'll be proud to say I heard him sing his hilarious and beautiful songs before he was "discovered".

My next stop after Chicago was Toledo, OH for a night. I didn't end up leaving Chicago until about 8pm so that put me in Toledo at 2am where I then got a room in a hotel and promptly passed out for the night. I didn't actually see much of Toledo because the next day I headed straight off for Pittsburgh! I took mostly toll interstates there and it ended up being quite pricey, so I tried the next stretch from Pittsburgh to Syracuse without using any toll roads. More on that in a minute. Pittsburgh was great! I was only there for a short time but I had a good time and I got to see the city and eat some deeeelicious ice cream! I was staying with a Semester at Sea friend, Ellen, and her husband. What kind and awesome hosts. They even drove me out to the city to see it and man what a cool city to see from the hills above! The Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet at a point in the middle of the city to form the Ohio River and Pittsburgh has tons of bridges throughout the city and a pretty awesome skyline, plus I saw it at sunset so all those factors together made for an amazing view. I also got to see the Duquesne Incline which is a funny-looking little trolley car type thing that transports people up and down from the main city to the hills above as part of Mt. Washington.

Overall, after my brief experience in Pittsburgh I was quite impressed and I'd LOVE to go back someday and see more of it. The next day, Friday, I had another experience that caused me to forever hold a special place in my heart for the people of Pennsylvania! I had some minor car trouble (nothing to worry about though folks, Baxter is doing just fine now and he got me to Maine yesterday like a champ!) but while I was driving on the interstate through rural PA the battery light came on in my car. After consulting with my mommy I called AAA to have someone take it to a garage and see what's wrong. I figured I shouldn't drive it all the way to the next town which was only 20 miles but who knows and I wanted Baxter to last me to Maine so I called AAA and they said they'd have a tow truck come get me in 30-40 minutes. After 30 minutes my tow truck driver called to tell me that he was looking for a good place to tow my car to (which I doubt is in his job description, so I was already impressed) and he'd be to me in 10 minutes to tow my car. He showed up promptly 10 minutes later and said he'd had some trouble finding a garage that would even take a look at my car even though it was most likely just a matter of replacing my alternator, and even Wal Mart didn't have time for me (which is good because I sure don't ever have time for them either! Psh. Yet another reason to dislike Wal Mart) but then he'd called up a guy named Joel who had proven to him before to be a good guy and he said sure he'd help me out. Now by the way, I was in way way rural PA so there were some super nice guys but they were quite hick-ish which was just awesome. So my tow truck driver took me to Garman's Auto Care which I would recommend to anyone who is ever traveling in northwestern Pennsylvania! They're good people. So the owner Joel checked out my car even though by then it was 3pm on the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend and every other place had turned me away but anyways then a little old man walked in with a new alternator in a box, so there was my part! He put the new part in and only charged $44 for labor plus the cost of the part. I mean to sum up...2.5 hours total from the time the battery light came on to the time I was back on the interstate on my way to New York! 2.5 hours, that's it! And met some pretty funny and awesome rural people. Oh that reminds me, my tow truck driver said his birthday is Tuesday, so...happy birthday tow truck driver from Cambridge Springs, PA! And thats for your speedy and excellent assistance!

Now considering Baxter is 17 years old and has over 182,000 miles on him I'm impressed the first problem I had on this trip wasn't until Pennsylvania! Amazing. And after the new alternator he was good as new, or at least good as he was before, haha. And I successfully made it to Maine with no other problems except the price of gas!

Now although my little bout of car trouble was remedied very quickly, it did set me back 2.5 hours in my driving which was a lot since the drive was several hundred miles, going from Pittsburgh to Syracuse, NY and that was the stretch of the trip that I had decided to take smaller roads to avoid tolls so by the end of the day, despite my relative good luck with my car, I was a little grumpy and tired. I felt like Betty White in the Snickers commercial. But before my grumpy and Betty-like arrival in Syracuse I did get to see some gorgeous New York scenery. The only other time I had been in NY was in the city, so I'd never seen the nature side of the state. I was very impressed. I got some good sunset pictures. I also saw my very first amish person on a random little road in the middle of farm land NY!

So after I stayed a night in a hotel in Syracuse I wasn't able to work out seeing friends in Vermont and New Hampshire, although I'll catch them sometime later this summer, so I ended up heading straight to Maine yesterday from Syracuse and by that point I was pretty much ready to be done and be in Maine so I sucked it up and paid the tolls to drive the more direct route which was quite fast and I arrived here in the lovely town of Wells yesterday around 6:30 local time!

So...that's been my week. I'll have to write more later about what I've been up to so far in Maine! For now, though, I'm going to bed. Goodnight, all, and peace out! :-)