I got up early at 5am and was on the road by 5:30am. My goal was to get east of Minneapolis before rush hour, which worked great. My goal for the day was to get to Cleveland (~12 hours) so I would have a reasonable drive the next day.
I was into Wisconsin in no time and then I set my sights on some Spotted Cow (beer). Luckily, you can buy alcohol at 8am in Wisconsin because I wasn’t sure how late it would be before I crossed out of Wisconsin.
After that stop there wasn’t much to talk about. I switched between music, true crime podcasts and silence. Right around Chicago I talked with Jaclyn, Brooke and Beckett who were heading down the grammies for Brooke’s sleepover. I navigated through the inevitable Chicago traffic (around noon) and was into boring Indiana. My dad gave me a call at some point to help break up the drive. When I was on the phone I got stuck behind someone at a toll who drove into the EZ-Pass lane but didn’t have an EZ-Pass. So now, everyone in that lane was stuck because they still had old school gates so he couldn’t go forward or backward. Eventually though, the gate opened.
I made it into Ohio and took a short work call (to help entertain myself). Ohio was loaded with cops but I made it through ok. I reached Cleveland a little before 7pm and decided to keep going so the next day would be easier. I eventually stopped in Erie, PA for the night.
Total driving was ~14 hours and just under 900 miles. Easily the longest day of the trip but I was lucky that I felt fresh for most of it and it didn’t drag on!
-Jay
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