and we're off

From Baltimore MD to Portland OR via Milwaukee WI in a Jeep Liberty with 5 cats and Francie's mom.

Left Saturday afternoon and drove 515 miles: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia again and Ohio, stopping in Dayton, OH. 
There weren't a lot of cool highlights from Day 1 because Baltimore to Columbus is a familiar route that i could do in my sleep, but there were some interesting rounds of musical cats as we figured out the best configuration with crates and carriers.
 Also, it took us 7 tries to find a hotel with outside doors -cause, you know, 5 cats- and i can certainly say that the America's Best Value Inn outside of Dayton had at least that going for it.
Day 2 got off to a bit of a rough start as i only got about an hour of sleep and 3 of the 5 cats -the boys, BTW- found such a good hiding place behind the dresser that we didn't find them until we had moved and dismantled every piece of furniture in the room, including the bed.
Finally on the road around 10:30, we had gone about 6 miles when the back passenger window decided that it didn't want to go up ever, ever again; getting off of I-70W three exits after we got on, i went into Meijer's -huge Midwestern superstore- to get emergency repair supplies:

Nearly 20 years of creating cool stuff from plastic and tape does come in handy in situations like this.

See?

I fixed it.

This little side adventure took almost an hour as i also had to buy kitty treats and litter [Dear Meijer's: having the litter boxes in one place and the litter in another doesn't help anyone] and while doing the second plastic layer -one inside and one outside of course- i dropped the tape and it rolled away much quicker than one would expect, finally lodging behind a wheel five cars down the row.

Once actual driving got underway it was a nice day, with sightings of a huge candle right over the Indiana line (spotted too late to get my own pic) and a cheese castle right inside Wisconsin (no time to stop people; we are off pace!).
Yes, i did say Wisconsin, which many of you know is a new state for me:

Oh, i almost forgot that there was also a cool wind farm that went on for miles and miles in Indiana. We stopped right in the middle of it for a litter box break, affording us a great view in all 4 directions:

I thought being a Sunday meant that Chicago wouldn't be too much of a problem, but much like the DC Beltway it was snaggly anyway, perhaps just to spite us:

look kids, Chicago and traffic

look kids, Chicago again and even more traffic

We made a side trip to Milwaukee to drop off one of the cats to Francie's college friend Carmen, but decided to push on a little farther before calling it quits for the day.

 Spotting this guy outside of the Rodeway Inn sealed the deal for us and now we are settling in for the night with the humans eating chicken fingers from the attached bar and the cats looking for improbable places to sleep.



I will find a way behind this bed, mark my words...

Day 2: 493 miles in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Nighty-night.