Day 4

States covered: 3 (PA, WV, OH)

Our wish was granted, and today we had beautiful driving weather. Throughout central and western Pennsylvania, it was extremely windy, but it was sunny, in the mid-40s, and there was no precipitation. We took advantage of the great weather and drove over 400 miles today, so we were pleased with our progress.

We checked out of our hotel, got gas, and stopped for breakfast at the American Family Restaurant (also a truck stop), the same place that served us dinner last night. After a filling and delicious breakfast, Todd stopped at the front counter to purchase two "Interstate Highway" BINGO cards for us to do on the trip. We have been having a lot of fun with it so far. :-)

Western Pennsylvania was beautiful, and when we started seeing signs for Wheeling, we discovered that we would have the added bonus of travelling through West Virginia, which we had not expected. (We would have known had we looked at an up-close map of the area.) Todd got some photos of three great tunnels in the Pennsylvania mountains.

During this part of the trip we were extremely focused on finding the last few (difficult!) items on our Interstate Highway BINGO cards -- a horse, a Corvette, a cola sign, and a motorcyle. We finally spotted some horses, Todd saw a Corvette, we counted an off-ramp sign for an A&W restaurant as a cola sign, but we were still stuck without having seen a motorcycle. No surprise in February, but more on that later . . .

We stopped for a snack at a Wendy's in Washington, PA, where Todd took over driving. It was only about two and a half hours from there to Columbus and Aunt Anne's house. We arrived at Anne and John's by about 5:30ish.

They took us to dinner at The Elevator, a wonderful restaurant/microbrewery in downtown Columbus. Todd had the tomato scallop chowder and jambalaya linguine. Steph had the stuffed pork chop with cherries and walnuts. Everything was outstanding! Following dinner, Anne and John took us on a short driving tour of Columbus and pointed out some sights at Ohio State.

Later in the evening, we went into town with Anne to see Brad's band, Solar System Navigators, play at a tavern. On our way out, we spotted a motorcycle in the garage -- the elusive last BINGO square! We were so happy! Anyway, I digress . . . The band was outstanding, and we had a great time seeing Brad and hearing some excellent music and poetry. :-)

At Aunt Anne's we also got to do three loads of laundry, for which we were very thankful. [Thanks, Aunt Anne!] Now we should both have enough clothing to get us to California!

Right now, we are both eager to get some rest since we would like to see the Air Force Museum in Dayton tomorrow and get most of the way to St. Louis before the driving day is over.