On the Road: Day 1: May 25, 2011

We left the Aerie at 8 AM this morning after seeing to the cats (a friend will be stopping by once a day to feed them while we're gone) and headed west on US Route 6. The trip as far as Smethport was not new to me, I but from there on, it was all new until we joined up with I-90.

We traveled through the Alleghany National Forest and on into the oil rich northwest corner of Pennsylvania. Numerous wells were visible from the road; their donkey headed pumps pulling oil from below ground to deposit it into 5000 gallon plastic (replacing metal) cisterns from which it will be picked up by tanker trucks. These aren't gushers, folks. Rather it's slow but steady retrieval of oil from below ground. Still, volume is created when so many wells are in production.

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Sirius Radio, which came with the Jeep Compass, has long since been cancelled, BUT, they have a free trial week going on. We listened to music from the 1950s all day. And never heard the same song (by the same artist) during the entire time. So enjoyable was the experience, we may break and renew our subscription when we get home.

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The weather along today's 450 mile leg was excellent--until we neared Toledo, Ohio. At that time, we could see a line of very, very dark clouds stretching across our path. We nearly made it through the line--lightening striking off in the distance in the north toward Lake Erie--when the sky opened up and it POURED. Visibility dropped to only a few yards and I slowed down considerably. And the temperature fell like a rock. The temps dropped from 78 degrees to 58 degrees in about 10 minutes.

We got through it and, on the west side of Toledo, found a motel room at a Comfort Inn.

It was 5 PM and time for dinner. While eating, we saw a weather report on the TV in the bar that mentioned tornado warnings for the very counties we had just been through. And they had photos of baseball sized hail from those same areas. Yikes!

And it poured while we were in the restaurant, too. Hard. With lightening. No hail, though.

Tomorrow we head west around the southern tip of Lake Michigan and then through Chicago and north to Milwaukee. It's about 320 miles to go. We'll gain an hour on the clock, too. We'll cross into the Central Time Zone when we get near South Bend, Indiana.