#Schummer14: Day 24 recap of Summer of Schnyder ~ the long drive toward home starts

We have been fortunate on the Schummer of Schnyder trip to not have very many days of long driving with no stops – we pretty much went state to state here in the northeast. For example, we had breakfast in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and lunch in Portland, Maine, where we spent the rest of the day. Even driving up to our farthest eastern destination – Bar Harbor – was a slow drive winding along the coast of Maine with stops in many of the small harbor towns.

So when Thursday, Aug. 7 came along we were prepared to suck it up and just drive. Well, Lee did the driving and I sat there reading magazines and looking out the window enough to make sure we were headed in the right direction.

We originally planned to have a day and night in Connecticut to explore, but we realized we just didn’t have enough time to really see the state so we’ve shelved having Mystic Pizza for another trip. We also decided against a stop at the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, a destination we decided we could get back to via an airplane trip sometime.

Maybe I should explain here that we only count visiting a state if we spend the night there. So driving through doesn’t count toward on our list of state’s we’ve visited. This would explain why we chose to spend the night in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Day 24 of #Schummer14. We are now only missing: Delaware (both), Connecticut (both), Idaho (both), North Dakota (both), Alaska (both), Oregon  (Lee), Mississippi (Lee), North Carolina (MeLinda).

Our route once we left Cape Cod included 35 minutes through Rhode Island (at a diagonal, it would’ve been much shorter straight across), lengthwise along the coast of Connecticut, then briefly into New York and New Jersey before spending more than three hours on the horrible Pennsylvania Turnpike that incredulously charged us $17 and dumped us out on 14 miles of hell also known as I-70 in West Virginia.

As I posted on Facebook, we were in West Virginia 16 miles and 10 hours and that was 16 miles and 10 hours of my life I will never get back. At the end of a very long driving day, I was pretty annoyed that the Marriott in Wheeling didn’t warn me when I’d talked to them earlier in the day to ask for a quiet room and let them know we’d be arriving late. Clearly this was major ongoing night construction that affected the exit for their hotel as well as closure of the exit before the hotel, removing the alternative route available once drivers realized two miles of I-70 were going to take 45 minutes to get through at 10 p.m. When we mentioned this to the desk clerk the next morning (letting him know it would be a courtesy to tell future guests), his response was: “Oh, I don’t usually go that route.”

My response {in my mind}: You know what route you can go right now, buddy? Yeah, you AND the horse you rode in on.

I have always been a fan of the Kansas Turnpike and now I would consider myself the president of the fan club.

We did enjoy the day overall though. We had beautiful scenery at times, tried TastyKakes for the first time, ate great barbecue in Pennsylvania and saw a gorgeous sunset. After 699 miles, seven states and 14 hours that day, we arrived at our destination tired but safe.

~~~

#Schummer14 – Lee & MeLinda Schnyder are turning their home in Wichita, Kan., over to a friend and taking a month-long road trip. They’ll travel from Kansas to Ontario and Quebec, Canada; then through Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The trip home will include stops in Ohio and Missouri. Beyond the blog, you can follow #Schummer14 on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.