Road Trip 2010! Days 16 and 17 / Newville, PA and the drive to Chicago

Sarah and I slept in a bit in the morning, enjoyed breakfast with the Hoecks, packed up the car and then left at about 10 AM to start heading west to Newville and Justin’s house. Our drive took us through smaller state highways across fields and past farms. We were even warned that we might encounter a few Amish farmers driving their buggies along the road. Sure enough, while driving through Strasburg I almost hit one as he whipped his buggy out onto the shoulder of the road, despite the steady stream of traffic moving along the road. It’s a very strange thing to be driving down the highway, then suddenly being confronted with a large horse, followed by a small buggy driven by a hunched over man with a chinstrap beard.

Sarah and I agreed that we should stop in at Hershey, PA given that we would be driving so close to the hallowed land of chocolate. It was rather easy to find Hershey’s Chocolate World once we arrived in the town, and after parking we walked past a rather large Thursday late morning crowd to begin the free tour/ride, which consisted of an “It’s a Small World”-esque ride in which we were shown the various steps required to make chocolate and were regaled by a trio of singing cows. Afterwards we got a free sample of chocolate, and went into the store to buy some York peppermint patties, white chocolate Reese’s cups and a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Aside from learning about how chocolate is made, I also learned that Hershey’s makes such delicious treats a Twizzlers, Jolly Ranchers, Good and Plentys and Almond Joy. That Hershey guy had some good ideas when it came to confectionary delights.

From there we went into eastern Harrisburg to get some groceries and food court lunch from Costco (oh, and samples), then bought a few books at Borders and tried to find a place to get an oil change. We’ve already put about 4000 miles on the car, so it was definitely time. The third auto care store that we tried had a wait time of less than an hour, so we left it there while we went to the McDonalds next door and enjoyed some air conditioning. Once it was finally done we got on the freeway to drive the last 45 minutes to Justin’s house, only to be confronted by gridlock. We decided to try our hand on surface streets, and after winding our way through the capital and arriving at another freeway that was at least moving, we drove the rest of the way to Justin’s, where we ate some dinner then hit the hay so that we could get up early to drive to Chicago.

In the morning we ate breakfast, packed the car, said our goodbyes to Justin and then hit the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading west. As we would soon find out, toll road would be the order of the day. We drove through the mountains of central and western Pennsylvania, made it through 40 miles of construction north of Pittsburg, then left PA for Ohio. Upon leaving PA, we were met with a $13.25 toll for the honor of using their road. Ohio flew by, and upon entering Indiana we paid the great state of Ohio $15 for the use of their roads. Indiana likewise parted us with $7.30, and the Chicago Skyway finished us off with two $1.50 tolls. For two California kids, all of these tolls were a little confusing. I felt that we crossed entirely too few bridges for the number and amount of tolls that we paid.

When we finally did arrive in Chicago, we drove around Grant Park for a while, up the coast by Navy Pier, the back through the Loop and out to our hotel. We’re at an Extended Stay near O’Hare, which is pretty awesome because it has a full size fridge, mini-kitchen, TV, wireless and a king-size bed. Not to mention, it’s less than $100 for two nights. Score! We’ll get up early tomorrow morning and see what we can see in Chicago.