Road Trip to Wedding Part I: The Midwest

Roy and I have been back from our road trip for over a week now. In short, the trip was amazing and the wedding was perfect! We made it to Vegas after driving 5175 miles and spending 95 hours together in our rented Ford Escape. Our trip went pretty much to plan except for a few adjustments to our itinerary which was not a big deal (sorry, Seattle - you got bumped). I'm just thankful we didn't have any flats or horrific weather or traffic to deal with - although we did come close to some wildfires. I meant to blog along the way but once we were on the road that notion went out the window. I didn't use my new laptop once! So here's part one of our trip.  Our first stop was in Bellevue, Kentucky to visit Roy's sister, Karla (one of the triplets). 

We got up bright and early on Friday and picked up our rental car.  It was a 2014 Ford Escape with over 28K miles on it and South Carolina tags.  Final destination: Las Vegas!

We had intended to leave our house by 9 AM but after breakfast, running around and getting everything loaded we ended up leaving at noon. We made it to Roy's sister's house at about 8:30 pm.  Bellevue is right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

Karla's house. I wish we took some photos of the amazing pizza and sushi Karla and Ernie got us for dinner that night but I think we were too in the moment to get the camera out. I wish we had a group photo also. I guess we weren't in documentation mode quite yet.

But I did manage to take some photos of Madonna the cat.

Testing out our new Sony camera before we left the next morning. It has a flip up screen so you can see yourself when taking selfies.

We went to the port and checked out the river and the view of Cincinnati before we headed off to Chicago.

HOOTERS sits on a barge.

Driving through Indiana we saw hundreds of windmills. They seemed to go on for miles.

We got to Chicago by lunchtime that Saturday. We headed to the Navy Pier but after seeing how crowded it was we decided to get lunch first. I wanted to check out Lou Malnati's for some deep dish pizza. I heard it was the best.

We went to the one nearest to the Navy Pier on Wells St. Roy and I each got a personal size pizza. It was just okay. I remember Giordano's pizza tasting much better when I ate it the first time I visited Chicago in 2009. I'll have to go back there next time and see if it really was better.

Strolled around the Pier and watched the yachts and speedboats. It was sunny but not too hot. A band was playing.

Ginormous.

A view of the skyline.

Selfie time.

A view of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). I wanted to swim in the lake but time was limited.

We headed toward Millennium Park after the Navy Pier but it was barricaded off and there were crowds of people everywhere. We found out that Lollapalooza was going on at Grant Park so we decided to head to Milwaukee. If we were staying in town it might have been cool to check out (Eminem and Outkast!?)

We left Chicago and headed north to Milwaukee. We got there around dinnertime and checked into a hotel near the airport. We headed to downtown to look for a place to eat but we ended up on a road that took us toward the city but it wouldn't let us exit off due to construction so we headed back out of it. We found this restaurant called The Packing House that ended up being right down the street from our hotel. So we drove one big circle to and from downtown Milwaukee to end up two miles down the street! It turned out to be really good though so I guess it was worth it. We both had baby back ribs and Roy picked up his first of many pint glass souvenirs.

We decided at the restaurant that we'd travel 11 hours the next day in order to get to Wall, SD. Better get some rest!

NEXT: Part II: The Road to Wall