Goodbye Ohio

Last Friday morning Tyler & I took off for California in our strategically packed-to-the-brim little Ford Fusion, complete with roofbag and so many snacks.  We left from Tyler's house in Wellington, OH, hugged our families, made some coffee breaks, waved to our Columbus family and friends as we passed our favorite city (hope you guys saw us waving!), we danced to Girl Talk in the car, I sang all of my favorite Hanson songs to Tyler until he made me stop, and we enjoyed the October colored Ohio trees one last time.

To pass the time on the many many drives back & forth from Northeast Ohio to Columbus during the college years, we came up with a game which we refer to as Letter Challenge.  We spot two letters as inspiration and then come up with as many word combos as we can using those letters, the funnier the better.  Until it becomes too annoying to continue.  Here's our best work from the RB letter challenge:

Rabid beagles, really bad, red buttcheeks, rockin backpack, rolling badlands, restroom bathroom, representin Bulgaria, ripe bananas, read books, raspy breather, rich babies, rotund belly, real butter, repetitive bowling, row boater, rap beats, Russian Bolsheviks, raw blueberries, and quite a few more too dumb to mention.

We joked about how we "visited" Ohio for twenty-three years.  Thanks for having us Ohio, we will always be Ohioans!  It  was a pretty life-shaping visit and we look forward to coming back as often as possible.

After Ohio we drove through Indiana, boyhood home of our friends Jake Murray and Abe Lincoln.  In Indiana we passed a big building that looked like a candle, and lots of corn & soybean fields.  Tyler & I decided that if we were in charge of transportation in the USA our first order of business would be to put awesome stuff along the highways for entertainment value.  Example, look at that giant ________ (insert food, body part, or animal) Tyler added that all giant roadside animal statues should be in attack position.  It was a long drive.   

Indianapolis

Illinois felt like it went on forever.  But finally we arrived at Chuck & Barbara's house just outside of St. Louis right around dinnertime, our first stop of the road trip.  They fed us an amazing dinner followed by an amazing breakfast (it's incredible how fast you get tired of fast food and look forward to real blueberry pancakes).  We were so lucky to have such kind and welcoming family to stay with throughout the trip!