Road Trip Day 2**

Day two of our trip got off to a great start. We were back on the road at around 7 after having a great continental breakfast. I was very impressed with the variety of food served. I had low expectations since it was a free breakfast provided by our hotel but I was pleasantly surprised by it. Jason and I ate biscuits and gravy (a rare food in our home) and a few other things and of course the kids had cereal with some fruit. During the planning of our trip Jason suggested looking for hotels that offered a free breakfast.  I can’t say I looked very hard for them but we did hit a few during our trip. Jason’s full of great ideas! I need to start following more of them.

 Sundays drive time was a little over 500 miles (somewhere around 9 hrs).

 Once we got in the car the kids quickly took a nap and I joined them. Jason tried to wake me up to have me look out the window at all the cool little towns in Iowa  but  it wasn’t until a gas station a little while later when I heard a friendly man ask Jason what he was doing so far away from home and receiving a txt message for Primary stuff that I finally woke up. Out in the middle of nowhere and I had 3G coverage.  

The highway/road we were on was part of the Mormon Pioneer auto trail. We stopped to read a little bit about the road and we were able to catch a glimpse of what Jason was talking about. It was very quiet and peaceful. We also saw an LDS meeting house on a turn we had to take not to further down the road. It was the most empty church parking lot I’ve ever seen for a Sunday but I would bet they get visitors all the time because of the location of it. 

Madison and Korbin made forts in the car. Privacy I’m sure was the primary purpose. Yesterday we started a new rewards program with the kids. Our friends get extra credit for giving us the scoop on this one. We told the kids we would give them $2 a day each. The catch was we would take it away in increments for sassy behavior towards each other in the car. I was prepared by giving them only change the first day. Our kids get along great for the most part however 2 weeks in a car might just be another story. The best part was they only lost 35 cents each by the time we got home. That was it! They did so well in the car. They lost 5 cents the first day which made me nervous. We told them afterwards that every time we would have to take money away it would have to be doubled. So the first time it was 5 cents. Later  they lost 10 cents and then before going into DC they lost 20 cents. They loved having extra spending money so they tried really hard to get along even when they were tired. A soon as they would start to get sassy after DC we would remind them of how much they would owe us if they kept it up, that would straighten them up really fast.

We saw so many fun things along the way. We drove past the oldest cemetery I've ever seen. It was very neat. I wish I would have taken a picture.  We stopped at a rest stop to stretch. We learned a little bit about the Amana colonies while we stretched.

We noticed every city or even small town had a large water tower. We saw lots and lots of water towers on this trip. It must be the thing to have back east. 

We stopped by the Illinois visitor center (next to the Mississippi river) but it was closed due to budget cuts. However we did have lunch by it in a nice grassy area overseeing the river. Leftover KFC chicken sandwiches and Pb and J. We ate a lot of sandwiches on this trip. Jason and the kids don’t mind sandwiches. They make a lot of meals we have at home into sandwiches.  I don’t mind eating ham or turkey sandwiches every once in a while but Pb and J isn't my fav at all, I have to be in a really good mood to make one for myself.  I told my mom about my large intake of sandwiches while on this trip and she laughed and suggested stopping and buying/cooking myself a cup o noodle at a gas station before we stopped to eat again. She’s a smart lady. Between her advice and Jason's I’m set.

 I like this picture even though it's blurry. We need to work on learning how to use our Nikon Coolpix 500. So far we really like the extra features. I wished we would have had more time to use/play with our new camera before taking it on this trip but what do you do. I did download the manual for it on my phone and read pages here and there along our trip. Still loving that zoom though.

We added a few things to our trip entertainment.  The first one we used yesterday never stood a chance and it was the one I thought the kids would like the most so I put extra time and effort into it. It was a license plate game. The idea was to find a license plate for each state until we found all 50.

Today we added the cow counting game. This is how you play it: first you divide the car into 2 teams - left side and right side. Then count the cows you see on your side of the car. If you pass a field full of lots of cows, you'd better count fast!  If you pass a cemetery on your side of the car, you lose all your cows -- but only if the opposing team calls out "your cows are buried!". We had such a great time with this game and we played it everyday on the road. Jason and Madison constantly found cemeteries. The eastern part of the United States must have a large number of cemeteries on the South side of the road if you’re heading east and lots of cattle farm on the North side of the road if you’re heading west. 

Somewhere in Illinois we saw a sign by an exit for President Ronald Regan's birthplace. On a whim we took it. You never know how cool something is until you stop and take a look for yourself right. *Lesson of the day: Don't believe because a sign says it's a point of interest it's going to be cool. We drove on little roads following signs for a long time before actually knowing how far it was going to be. Finally a sign said how many miles we had to go to reach our destination. It wasn’t close but by this time we had invested more time than we had anticipated so we decided to go for it thinking it was bound to be cool.  We saw a lot of this for a long time

then this

Yes, we expected to see a bit more. The size of this place is probably the size of our ward. Nope we didn't think it was worth getting out of the car. I rolled down the window and took the picture. 

Back towards the freeway. Tampico gets two thumbs down from us. 

On the same day we saw another exit sign for President Ronald Regan's something. Nope, we didn't stop. 

We arrived to our hotel while the sun was still up. We stayed in Rosemont, Illinois which is basically a suburb of Chicago. Jason scored us a killer deal for this night stay. When we were planning this part of the trip we hesitated staying anywhere near here. Hotels were very pricey in Chicago but we got lucky and Jason got a text alert from Priceline for the Doubletree in Rosemont. Even adding the $21 for parking it was still a great deal. We only left the parking garage once. The parking garage is part city owned and they charged for every time you come into it. It was nuts! 

After checking out the room and bed sizes (the smallest full size beds I had ever seen, literally my hands hung on both sides of the bed while lying in them) we researched some hot spots for good food. Chicago is known for the food and we didn’t want to miss out on it. We’re fans of Man vs. food so we looked at places they had listed on that website and read up on some local reviews. We decided on having Chicaco Deep style pizza from a local place. Jason loved it! 

After dinner we went into the heart of Chicago. It was awesome to see at night. I took pictures while in the car so there is a lot of bugs from the windshield in them. We clean it at every gas stop we did but it still got gross. We found Madison St. It was cool the first time in Chicago but along our adventure we found many Madison streets. It was only cool the first time. Our GPS struggled, it kept recalculating our route constantly. The tall buildings were too much for it. 

After exploring we drove back to our hotel and went swimming. I've learned that I can swim for a while if I'm relaxed but I start to over think the whole process I get anxious and then I sink fast. I'm still planning in swimming lessons for the kids and myself.

After another day we hit the overly sized twin beds.

Location: Nebraska,Iowa,Illinois 
Post 3 of 16

*Lesson of the day. I wanted to add some of our regrets from our trip in our posts. Things we should have done, could have done, never should have done,  ect. A friend told me about a line she was going to use on her blog. I loved it and asked for consent to use it as well. Lesson of the day sounds so much better than regrets of the day.

**Also this is draft #2 for this day.This one isn't as good as the first one. I spent a lot of time tying in things I forgot to add on Day 1 of our trip. It was almost finished when most of it got deleted on blogger. So lesson of the day for June 24^th, use Word and then copy and paste unto the blog.