The Drive, part 1

Getting out of the East

            The first leg of the drive was from upstate New York out into Wisconsin, in total about 16 hours of driving. The roads were great, even when we left it was relatively warm (we missed this last snow they’ve has the last couple of days!), and while stopping to get drinks we met a woman who was originally from Portland, Oregon herself. The world seems very small sometimes.

            I understand to an extend when they describe going through Pennsylvania and Ohio as “driving through western-western New York. Other than a slight change in tree species composition- more oaks and willows- there are plenty of gently wooded hills and small rivers or creeks. While parts of Ohio were unusually flat for me, the landscape didn’t really start being consistenly different until we hit Indiana. Then it was really flat for long periods of time, but even that wasn’t long lasting.

            By the time we were past Chicago (never again, we drove through around 9pm I think and the traffic on I-90 was awful. We were going about 70 and people were passing us. To add insult to injury we passed a taxi driver using only one hand looking totally chill. On my way back I plan on going out of my way to avoid this city) we had entered Wisconsin and the trees and hills were back. Stopped for the morning (?) here for a few hours of shut eye.

            After what seemed like forever going through Wisconsin and Minnesota, where we were greeted by a bald eagle early in the morning after pulling back onto the high way. By the evening came we were in the very, very flat eastern North Dakota. Thankfully these gave way after a time to interestingly shaped hills.