It's the Little Things...

I wish I had a starting odometer picture, but I do have this nifty little movie I made back in April when my car "turned over" to 200,000 miles.


Those Details...

Total Miles: 6,060
Hotels slept in: Stardust (Wallace, ID), Best Western (Laurel, MT), Rushmore Express & Suites (Keystone, SD), Best Western (Sioux City, IA), La Quinta (Merrillville, IN), [Ohio, stayed with my cousin], Travelodge (Florence, KY), Best Western (Foristell, MO), Days Inn (Hays, KS), Express Inn (Cheyenne, WY), Western Inn (Tremonton, UT), Super 8 (Pendleton, OR).
Best Hotel coffee: Western Inn, Tremonton, UT
Worst Hotel coffee: Travelodge, Florence, KY
Best breakfast: tie: Best Western, Sioux City, IA and La Quinta, Merrillville, IN
Worst breakfast: Rushmore Express and Suites (ironically, one of the nicest hotels)
Best beds and pillows: Best Westerns
Worst bed: Stardust
Best pool: Days Inn
Worst Pool: the only bad pool was a closed pool (Rushmore Express & Suites pool was closed during the hours we were there-we arrived quite late)

Restaurants: Cathay Inn, Spokane, WA; Perkins, Rapid City, SD; Cracker Barrel, Des Moines, IA; Bob Evans, Florence, KY; Cracker Barrel, somewhere in MO; LC's BBQ, Kansas City, MO; Johnson's Corner, Loveland, CO; Big John's Pizza, Pendleton, OR. I feel like I'm forgetting one, but really, we just didn't eat out very often. Mostly, we ate from our cooler (lunchmeat, cheese, etc for sandwichs or we had leftovers from a meal out).

Best food: Bob Evans was pretty darn good for a chain. It's an Ohio-mid-west local chain, started by a man named Bob Evans. He passed away just recently. Good food, reasonably priced, with a great kids menu (seriously, the menu was so full of games it entertained the kids for hours in the car). It was a real treat to have genuine Kansas City BBQ in Kansas City. The cinnamon roll at Johnson's Corner was great, I would definately go back there if I happened to be in the area (that is, about fifty miles north of Denver and south of Cheyenne). Perkins sucked, never need to go to another Perkins. Cracker Barrel was fun, but the food was heavy. I have some weird allergies, so it's hard for me to get things like salad or fruit plates when I'm dining out, so I stick to the cooked food.

Scariest moment: Seeing the oil light come on. But, it came on just as we were driving by a gas-station convenience store in Sundance, WY on our way to Devil's Tower. I added about four quarts of oil and we were good to go! (nb: my car burns oil. It's a 1990, with over 200,000 miles on it. It turns out that it burns more oil in a hot, dry climate than in a hot, moist climate, since we didn't need to add oil at all in the more humid states).

We did almost no night driving. I hate to drive at night, since my contact lenses glare (and my glasses are just as bad with the glare, but give me virtually no peripheral vision). I think we did perhaps two or three hours at night at the most.

More details to come...