Day 1 - Over the hills and far....far into Gary, IN?

We were off to a glorious start.  The sun was out, we were making good time, and most of all, the space dragon was in tip top shape.  Pennsylvania had a lot to offer our visual organs with its lush, green rolling hills.

The beautiful rolling hills of Pennsylvania

Then after driving the length of PA, we were on to Ohio, with its flat corn fields.  Nothing too exciting, but it sure wasn't as long as PA.

Then there was Indiana...the Crossroads of America.  After last night's events...I'm not quite sure I'm a fan of the Crossroads state.

So after a long journey across the length of 2 states and almost our 3rd state (bringing us straight to our destination of Chicago), the space dragon starts to act up.  It's acted up before, but this was unusual and extremely discomforting considering it was our first day on our trip across America, and we hadn't even made it to our destination point.


To make a very long and drawn out story relatively short, the space dragon broke down in a little town in IN called "Gary".  

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Gary, but we were not...not until last night at least.  After realizing we were stranded on the side of I-90 just a mere 40 miles outside Chi-town at 10:30pm, we were desperate.  Phone calls were made to sleeping parents, and to extremely unhelpful AAA agents who not only "forgot" to tell us there had been a 2 hour delay in getting a tow truck to our site, BUT after finally getting the car to start on our own, canceling the original tow truck, driving it to Gary's nearest gas station and failing, yet again, to start it, and having to rebook another tow truck, the AAA agent assured us that the tow truck would not only drive the car to a mechanic, but drive us to the nearest hotel too.  FALSE.  We find out that the driver can not in fact do this because tow trucks are not a taxi service - fair enough.  The nice man brings us to the nearest strip of motels in Gary (possibly the shadiest city your car could ever break down in) where there is a mechanic across the street.  Oh happy day...?

After about 30 minutes of discussing the pros and cons of either sleeping in the car in the parking lot of the motel, or sleeping in the "f***ing hooker a$$ motel", we decided for the latter and slept uncomfortably at 3:30am central time, at the Dollar Inn.  Don't worry, they had free HBO.