Road Trip Part II

I've resigned to the fact that I'm kind of a bad blogger at this point.  I rarely lug my big camera with me places (I'm taking many of my pics on the IPhone these days), all of my posts are recaps, and many of them are belated by a week or in this case two!  Anyway, I've said it before- this blog is really kind of a journal for me, even though I LOVE connecting with you guys as well.  Life is busy, and sometimes spending the two-three nights with my husband while he's home takes priority over getting my blog posts up in a timely fashion.  Just thought I'd give that brief disclaimer before I post my second road trip recap two weeks late ;)

So we left off leaving Chicago.  I drove the leg between Chicago and Indianapolis, and we actually hit a decent amount of traffic at one point in the trip, which made me feel like this...

I'm an impatient driver.  It's a good thing I don't live in DC anymore...

We arrived at Greg's friend Dave's house outside of Indy around lunchtime and he got us Jimmy John's subs for lunch.  He's got two little boys, and we'd only met one of them, six years ago at our wedding, so we got to see how big he'd gotten and meet his little brother.  Dave and Greg went to college together and were flight instructors together, so they go way back.

Greg had gotten Dave a couple PlayStation games for his birthday, so the guys played some flight game for a while, and Dave's wife and I chatted about my pregnancy.  We stayed a couple hours before heading back to the car for our next leg of the trip, to just south of Indy, to see my friend Melanie.  Last time I saw Melanie was a week before she ended up giving birth to her son, when I went to Dayton for her baby shower about a year and a half ago. I had yet to meet her son, Isaac.

We got there at dinner time and they had planned for us to go to a nearby winery where they had music and food trucks set up.

We all decided we wanted potatoes from the spud  truck.  I had the Veggie Spud and it was awesome- lots of broccoli, carrots, cheese and sour cream.

The wait was pretty long and it was a little dark by the time I got it, so I went sans picture of the spud.  We spent a good amount of time chasing Isaac around while eating :)

It got dark quickly, so we finished our potatoes and headed back to their house to chat and go to bed.

Sunday, after breakfast, Melanie and I took Isaac and Clyde for a walk.

Then we all got ready for the day.  We went to lunch in downtown Indy at a pet friendly restaurant on the canal.

We sat outside so Clyde could join us.

How cute is Isaac?!

Lunch was good, I had a portobello panini, chips, and a salad, and the chips were homemade and amazing :)

We did a quick walk around the canal after lunch.

Then we went to a park where Melanie had a family photo shoot scheduled.  Luckily it was pet friendly so Greg and I were able to walk Clyde around while they had their pictures taken.

I got a bunch of shots of everyone while we were there :)

The park was really picturesque.

There were trails through the woods...

And even a lake!

We all met up after the photo shoot and got a couple more pictures.

Isaac was a favorite photo subject for me.

Good practice for lots of baby photo shoots this spring!  After some fun in the park, we decided to stay in for dinner at Melanie's house and grill out.

We spent some time in their backyard, which backs up to a pond/lake.  Isaac likes picking up the hickory nuts on their dock and throwing them into the water.  It occupied him for a while.

One last shot of Melanie and I...

It felt like all of our visits were kind of short with everyone we saw, but it was a good way to see everyone by driving all over, so I feel like it was a good trip.  I think Greg and I are both relieved that we got to see so many friends and family that we've been meaning to visit for so long.  And probably the next time we see most of them, we'll have our new baby to show off, which is crazy to think about!

Road Trip Part 1

A couple weeks ago, Greg got his schedule for October.  He realized he was going to have 10 days off between the end of the September schedule and the beginning of the October schedule.  Obviously this doesn't happen very often.  A plan quickly started forming to do something we've been thinking about for a while- visit family and friends in the Midwest.  We started brain storming a plan and a route and within hours we kind of had the whole thing tentatively mapped out.  We made calls to check with everyone and see if they were available and then geared up for the trip.  Road trip!

We left on Wednesday (September 26th), at around 2:30pm, since I opted to work a half day then come home and pack up and go.  We brought the appropriate road snacks and headed towards Ohio.

Our dinner stop was Charleston, WV.  You may recall that Greg used to be based there for another airline, so he kind of knows the layout and had a vague idea of where he wanted to go to scope out dinner options in the downtown area.  I was actually kind of nervous because I didn't see any pet friendly options listed on Bringfido.com and we had Clyde with us, so I wasn't sure we'd find a spot where we could eat outside.  We then saw a pizza place called Pies and Pints with some outdoor tables and decided to ask if we could eat outside with Clyde.

The bar staff said we could order stuff to go and eat outside, so that worked out great for us.  We got a big salad with balsamic and a margarita style pizza.

The food was actually outstanding and really beat our other option of drive-thru fast food.  Glad we stopped there!

After dinner our plans hit a bit of a snag when we both received cell phone calls from our house alarm system.  We were both in a panic.  Over four hours from home and no way to easily check on the house.  We went through our roster of friends and were able to have our friend Pete check on the house for us and reset the alarm.  Turned out the batteries in one of our door sensors had died and set the thing off.  Excellent timing right??

Between stopping for dinner and dealing with the alarm crisis, we added a bunch of time on to our trip and didn't arrive at our hotel in Columbus, Ohio til almost midnight the first night.  We were both exhausted and crashed.

I had hoped to have some time to see my old campus at Ohio State and even see a friend there, but our late night didn't allow for that, so Thursday morning, we took a quick cruise through campus on our way out of town.  I couldn't believe how much High Street has changed since last time I saw it!  A lot of the bars I used to go to aren't there anymore.  One is a Panera now!  Kind of unreal.  I wish I'd had more time to explore the campus, but we were kind of on a schedule, so I'll have to save that for another time.

We hit the road for Indiana.  Clyde was a really good sport about all the driving.

It had been raining in Ohio, but after a while the weather became pretty nice and we even saw some fall foliage.

We finally made it to Greg's grandmother's house early afternoon and went for a late lunch with her and Greg's Aunt.  I had a five egg omelet, hash browns, and pancakes (carb overload, I know) at this cute country restaurant near her house.  I ate about half of each.  I think the baby liked it all.  Greg's grandma is 101 years old.  And she lives still lives by herself.  She was still driving until about a year ago.  Crazy...  She's still really with it.  It's amazing.  I'm hoping our baby inherits those genes!

After our visit in Indiana, we got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Chicago to see Greg's parents.  We arrived there about 7:30pm Chicago time (they're an hour behind), and had a little veggie pizza and some cookies with them.  They are watching some friends' Chihuahuas for a couple weeks while they are away, so we had FOUR dogs running around at their house.  Nuts!

The next morning, after breakfast, we took all four dogs on a scenic 3 mile walk.

The rest of our day entailed a visit to Buy Buy Baby with my in-laws, and then a crazy visit with my sister-in-law, her husband, their four kids, and three dogs.  It was pretty exhausting!

Greg's dad got a couple family pictures of Greg, Clyde, Me, and the bump before we left Chicago.

Stay tuned for the Indianapolis portion of the journey!