The Trip is Going Well. . .

Middie is enjoying himself; as am I. I'm stretching it to three days of driving - after the first 13 hours, I decided limiting today to ten was a good idea!

We went from VA to Illinois on the first day, and other than the novel experience of driving a 16' truck through windy mountain roads, it was uneventful. (Translation: nolu obeyed the speed limit for once instead of doubling it.)

Introducing Yellow Truck - I kind of want to keep it. So many people complain about how loud/uncomfortable/hard to drive moving trucks are, but I kind of like it. It's a lot quieter and smoother than my car, at least, and Middie absolutely loves riding in it.

Yellow Truck! by noludoru, on Flickr

MIDDIE. CAN YOU READ THE SIGN!?

IMG_9085 by noludoru, on Flickr

Illinois was gorgeous - all rolling hills and fields bordered by trees. I switched the GPS to "shortest distance" and ended up adding an hour to my trip in the form of long, winding back roads through sleepy little towns in the middle of nowhere.

Illinois by noludoru, on Flickr

We arrived at sunset and I met up with Beanie for Mexican food (NOM!) and met the Sheltie crew. Beanie is awesome, and I want a Sheltie now. I tried to steal Payton and Georgie, but Middie wanted to eat Payton. No pictures because it was dark and cold and there were five wiggling dogs to keep track of. Bring on the lynch mob.

Today was mostly spent in Missouri. It's hillier, was covered in snow, and had all kinds of fun signs.

Missouri by noludoru, on Flickr

We didn't take any breaks except for dinner today, so he gave me sadfaces.

IMG_9192 by noludoru, on Flickr

IMG_9149 by noludoru, on Flickr

And we got a super comfy hotel room for the night because of the impending Blizzard of Doom. They were very kind and let Middie run around in the courtyard for a bit.

IMG_9222 by noludoru, on Flickr

This is where he really wanted to be:

IMG_9223 by noludoru, on Flickr

SO STINKIN CUTE.

IMG_9231 by noludoru, on Flickr

He's conked out next to me right now. The way he manages to sleep the whole day, wake up for an hour or so, and then sleep the night through is baffling. When I first brought him home I didn't see him sleep for three months.

That does look like fun. And I love shortest route! I tend to set my GPS then try and find my own way anyway down back roads

How stinkin cute is he??!!! Middie looks like the perfect travel companion.

I think the same thing about Henry with the sleep patterns. Sometimes I do the math and realize he's slept about 22 out of 24 hours. Wish I could say the same.

Looks like a fun trip. I love road trips so much. 2 years in a row, my husband and I did a trip from OH to NM. The first time we were like, "I wonder how many states we can hit during the trip?" The answer is 12.

Looking forward to more pictures and good luck with your Blizzard of Doom

Looks like you guys are having fun! Yay for awesome hotel people.

Glad Middie is a good travel companion.
He isn't singing along with every song on the radio is he? That can get real old real fast!

So glad you're posting your trip. Looks like the two of you are having a good time. Love all the pics. Stay safe driving. Looking forward to your next sets of pics.

Thanks everyone! <3 He is quiet - mostly - while we're driving. It keeps me from killing him.

We just had an incident this morning where he bit (or at least heavily slobbered on) the manager of the hotel. Unprovoked, at least from what I could see. The guy walked past him like about 20 other people had done that morning without him batting an eye and he growled and lunged. I have no idea WTF is going on in his tiny little brain.

This is frustrating - I thought the biting people issues were just happening at home with my parents. This is something we need to work on, though, because he's bombproof with 99% of people and when he does decide to take exception to them I have absolutely no warning. (Seriously, bompbproof - I have had crowds of kids run at him full throttle and tackle him and he just ate it up. Strangers have picked him up and hugged him before.)

Cool! What part of Illinois did you drive through? Southern IL, right? I only ask because we have no rolling hills up here by the lake, it's all flat prairie. But a friend of mine who's son goes to Southern Illinois University told me that southern IL is totally different and really beautiful.

Yep, southern! It's still FLAT compared it VA, though. The hills you see in the photos were what I was talking about - very, very mild. It was lovely.

Nice! Yeah, here it's like comically flat for the most part. I'd really like to see more of the southern part of the state.

Hey, we just made the opposite journey a few months ago. It looks like you are moving to Denver? Awesome! It is gorgeous out there.

Good choice to go with Penske. They have awesome customer service, and the van we got, same exact specs, was just about brand new and was a very nice ride. Good luck on the rest of your journey!

Let me tell you about my experience with Penske. I flew out to Portland to help my BIL and SIL move back to the midwest. Flew out, packed up the truck, left the next morning. By 730 am we were overheating after only about 20 min of driving pretty flat highway in cool temps.

Called, told us to stop and check the coolant and we did, it wasn't to the bubble that you could see so we had to go look for some. He said it had to be a very specific kind made for these big diesel engines, so Ok, off we go. Thankfully we had his wife's vehicle that I was driving, and went searching at auto stores for this particular antifreeze.

I think something like that should be checked before you check it out, but that's me. So we proceed to fill it and it takes about a half second and it's above the little glass bubble, so though it was "low" it wasn't enough that it should have affected anything at all.

They tell us, it's good enough, and go on our way. So we do. Now we're about 2 hours from leaving, and only 20 miles from Portland maybe. By the time we hit the highway, it was running hot again.

Told my BIL to turn on all the heat and roll down the windows, so he did and we kept driving to the next town they told us to get to. We get there and take it to the mechanics we're told to and the part has to be flown into portland and then they have to drive and get it and get back to put it in. So we spent the day in some town, don't remember, pretty much wasting the day away.

Gets fixed, start on the highway and within 10 minutes, it's hot again. Call the mechanic and no answer, call penske, they call mechanic and they said it was fixed. Tell Penske we're on the side of the road with an overheated truck again.

So they send out a tow truck. We wait for a couple hours again, tow truck arrives, too small to haul that big truck thru the mountain pass. They're going to tow it to Yakima WA and people are going to meet us there to unload our current truck, reload another one and send us on our way.

So we wait for another truck to tow it to Yakima. Finally gets there and we drive on and we check into a hotel in Yakima and wait for the tow truck and reloaders to call us. We have to be present for the reload in case anything breaks. We check in and then get something to eat and the Penske calls and says they should be at the destination in 10 minutes so we leave to meet them.

It's now 1:30 in the morning. They said they'd have a crew there to reload and it would only take them 30 minutes to reload their largest truck. They're professionals they told us, i had my doubts. Show up and they are two maybe 20 somethings and one is still in his slippers. His ****ing slippers????

Guess who ended up reloading the truck??? Not them. So now we're 24 hours on the road, only in Yakima, WA and reloading a truck we just loaded the day before. We got done about 4 in the am, slept for 2 hours and then hit the road again

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful thankfully. Three weeks later of daily phone calls and complaining they finally paid us back for the hotel room in Yakima. They weren't all that pleasant to deal with.

hope your cross country move goes much more smoothly

RTH, I am not entirely surprised about your experience. My overall experience with the company makes yours look pleasant. Sadly, mine involves social media waivers that prohibit sharing the year-long story. ;-) The experience with the Penske truck rental has gone quite well, with the exception of a CEL and a transmission that's crapping out at 25,000 miles - but it's a GMC truck, so that's not unexpected.

The only reason I went with them is because with discounts it was almost $600 less than the competition.

Megan, I'm glad you had a good experience! And yes, we are finally headed to Denver. It's been fourish years in the making, and I decided I was just going to start living my life the way I want to live it instead of looking back and wishing I had.

That last sentence is awesome.