Shoptaw Family Vacation 5: Trip to Ohio/Columbus

After our fun but exhausing day in St. Louis, we got to sleep in a little bit in our nice hotel bed. Not too much, because we were loaded up and checked out around 8 AM and on the road. Thankfully, there wasn't any problem (or nothing major, at least) in wrapping up the room and getting out of St. Louis. We stopped about 20 minutes away in Illinois to get breakfast, then continued on I-70. (This also was about all that Meron saw of Illinois, as she fell asleep soon after and didn't stir until we were into Indiana.)

The trip went very smoothly, since I-70 went straight into Columbus. We had a few turns (more like making sure we stayed on the right road) around Indianapolis, but that went very well. That is, until we made the turn and started toward Ohio.

I had seen these signs on the road saying "Road Construction--Take XXX to Dayton". Now, being the stay-on-the-directions kinda guy I am, that didn't sit well to me. Sure it might be a good idea, but I don't go running off the reservation without a darn good reason (or access to Google Maps). So I figured that, unless the road was completely blocked off and it forced me to the detour, I wouldn't deviate from the path. Because how bad could the construction be, anyway? We were making good time and everything looked great.

After doing our bounce around Indianapolis, I found out how bad it could be as basically both lanes of traffic stopped. It took us roughly 45 minutes to go 11 miles, which was not a whole lot of fun. (What we'd have done without that DVD player, I have no idea!) We had to let the Columbus gang know we were going to be about an hour later than we thought. After we got through all that, though, we made good time and got to Columbus without incident. Well, I did take the wrong exit for the ice cream place we were going to, but I wound up just farther down the same road and we got there with a phone call to the gang talking us in.

We met up with everyone at an ice cream parlor called Graeter's. Everyone was already there, so we got our deserts (strawberry milkshakes for Benjamin and me, I think coffee ice cream for Meron) and sat and talked for a while. There are pictures of all of us outside, but none taken with our camera (so you are all spared!).

After close to two hours, the gathering broke up and we headed to Meigs County, which is where Meron's family is. This trip went pretty smoothly as well, until about halfway there. Sarah started screaming her head off, most likely because she was tired of the car or something like that. We stopped to try to settle her down, but no luck. Meron took over driving (because it was her area and she enjoyed the drive) and I did my best to settle her down. Not a lot of luck there, but we made it to her dad's store around 8 PM.

It's always good when the main driving is done. Now we could get to enjoying the vacation, at least for a few days.