My youngest son, Kyle, and I drove from Mesa, Arizona to Erie, Pennsylvania for a total of 2,300 miles that took us three and a half days of uproarious fun. He just started Medical School at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) this week and we are very proud. What better way to celebrate, bond, and laugh than three and a half days of driving? Sitting still in the car was the hard part so we tried to take turns driving every two to three hours.
Our goal was to try and eat at as many healthy restaurants as possible. (Laughable, I know!) However, being on the road, it is hard to find a good variety of places to eat and we quickly got tired of eating at Subway’s. So we set out to find something greasy to eat, and drinks with plenty of caffeine to keep awake.
Toll roads were another interesting pickle and I was surprised that there were so many! Our favorites were the ones that required exact change leaving us emptying clothes out of suitcases looking for some spare change in pockets. This was very stressful since we did not have that much change with us. The first night in Missouri I asked the hotel clerk for a roll of quarters and to my amazement she had one in her cash register that I immediately purchased. She looked at us funny as I thanked her profusely. She just couldn’t seem to understand our challenge with being “toll” tally prepared.
One of the major highlights was the bike ride my son and I took around the Presque Isle State Park, a 3,200-acre sandy peninsula that arches into Lake Erie and is Pennsylvania’s only “seashore”. The weather was ideal and the beaches on Lake Erie were fantastic. Being from California, I am used to going to the salt water beaches of the Pacific Ocean, however, this was the first time I had ever been to such a vast clear water beach of a Great Lake. We took many pictures and enjoyed our time together in front of many beautiful landscapes.
All in all our entire trip was memorable, but we both agreed to fly next time!