road trip leg #1

so, i am in chicago right now.
yesterday i was in baltimore.
tomorrow i will be in kansas city.

leaving goucher was very sentimental. i felt like we took as long to say goodbye as it did to get to our first destination, pittsburgh. pgh was a pleasant surprise- it was funky, artsy and really cool, from what i could tell. we stayed with our friend maura's uncle richard, who was extremely hospitable. he took us to a nice thai restaurant and then driving to mt. washington (a point on the top of a hill, overlooking the city), the south side (an area with a lot of nightlife...sort of like fell's point), and oakland (the university area). we all crashed around 11, wiped out from moving, driving and saying goodbye.

this morning we found a great, independent, student-y coffee shop on our way out of pittsburgh. we took a scenic two-lane highway (route 30) instead of the highway to get us into ohio. this led us through a gorgeous wooded area in western pennsylvania, a little bit of west virginia, and into an industrial part of ohio. there were a lot of red rock and factories. we took highway 80/90 through ohio for many hours, stopping in mansfield for lunch. we ate a hearty all-american meal and investigated some memorials in a park before it began to pour outside. it was laura's turn to drive after lunch- all highways in the middle of ohio, in poor-visibility rain- and about a minute after making a comment about matt and i being on cop watch, we got pulled over for speeding. it was kind of funny trying to explain why this girl with a california license was driving a car with washington plates and a maryland proof of insurance in ohio. we were just trying to get to chicago...

the drive after that wasn't so bad. we saw lots and lots of flat farmland throughout ohio and indiana. not much to report there. gary, indiana was horrifically industrial and ugly, but driving into chicago was great. i am sick of tollroads already and have developed an admiration for two-lane roads.

my mother's friend lynda and family are being very generous hosts this evening. they made us a great, relatively healthy dinner and chatted for a while, even though they just got back from italy yesterday. we are hoping to see a little bit of the city tomorrow before taking the 9-hour journey to kansas city. this means that we are leaving the house around 6 am and i need to go to bed!!

here are some photos from our adventures so far, hopefully in chronological order: