Live from Connecticut!

We made it to our first official stop in Cromwell, Connecticut, just outside Hartford. The trip felt longer than we expected and was certainly not without its share of adventure. To start with, we were somewhat hungry upon setting out, so we stopped at a service plaza on the PA Turnpike hoping for McDonalds. Well, that was clearly not meant to be. The plaza was scheduled to be shut down in two days, so the McDonalds was all but empty. They had a few pathetic salads and one lone employee who would have made The Slowskys look fast. Neeedless to say, we didn't eat there.

We quickly stopped at a service plaza in New Jersey where food was abundant, and moved on. But the GPS got painfully turned around somehow and sent us in completely the wrong direction. It was only my amazing sense of direction that saved us (Shelsy laughed when I wrote that).

Once back on the road, we found ourselves approaching New York City. Doesn't sound too hard, right? Well. The GPS wanted us to go some crazy way to avoid tolls, probably, but I didn't feel like turning onto some unknown Manhattan road in the Bronx, so I stayed on 95. The road snaked through these scary underground highways that looked to be straight out of Batman Begins. We made it through all that and seemed to be on the right track again when we saw a sign to pay a $6 toll ahead.

We didn't have six dollars.

So we roll up to the booth and ask what we should do. She tells us to just drive through and that we'll get a bill in the mail for the missing six bucks. I hope she's right and we don't get a notice to appear in court instead. We'll see.

It excited us greatly when we finally saw the sign welcoming us to Connecticut!

We followed a truck of toxic, flammable, corrosive stuff for a while, that was fun.

As we finally were pulling into the parking lot of the hotel, the lightning and thunder were starting to get bad. We knew it was going to start raining at any moment. So we got our room key and were getting the stuff out of the car when we heard the rain start...way over there. We stood for a moment, waiting for it to hit us, but it didn't. So we hurried to the door, still expecting to get rained on because it was clearly raining right over there! Just as we reached the door, it seemed to spread into our area. Very strange. :-)

So that's the update from day 1. Tomorrow, we explore Hartford, Connecticut's state capital and then continue our trek northwards to our second stop in Portland, Maine. We shall report back then. :-)