Did I call this a real part of the world yesterday? Don’t know what I was thinking….<\/p>\n
Yesterday<\/b><\/font> Montana may have higher speed limits, less road work, and more interesting scenery, but North Dakota is way<\/i> better because the rest stops are totally cool (vending machines! Phones!) and there are real live actual radio stations in this state. Including NPR. Although, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear songs like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good-bye twenties, hello minivan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The Little Bighorn Battlefield was on my route. That anniversary of that battle is next Tuesday. Easy to remember Custer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Last Stand when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on your birthday. (Hint, hint, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my<\/i> birthday coming up on Tuesday, not yours.)<\/p>\n This trip is just like Frontier House<\/i>, only instead of traveling west to start a new life in the wilderness, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m traveling east to start a new life in preppydom. And instead potentially dying from the elements, I could potentially die from boredom.<\/p>\n In North Dakota I lost both an hour and all feeling in my left butt cheek. However, neither was a surprise this time.<\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a place in North Dakota (Exit 7 on I-94) called Home on the Range.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m already sick of my music. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve listened to everything twice, except my mixed CD, which is the only thing that still keeps me entertained (thanks KAG!), although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that after listen number 7 tomorrow, it might start to wear off. Surprisingly, Barry Manilow is not the driving motivator I had thought he would be.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in a friggin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 smoking room, because I made it to Jamestown and I was starving! My own fault, of course, because I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bear to stop for food and lose precious driving time. I got to the Holiday Inn Express, and I asked if the restaurant next door was still open. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Till 10,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. It was 9:42. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Give me a room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got is smoking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I debated: I could go to the hotel next door, but then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be stuck with Arbys. I took the smoking room. Of course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure that dinner at the WagonMaster was worth it. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been craving pasta since the chicken wing night. Apparently, no one out here has heard of Italian food. The closest they get is Pizza Hut. Every now and then, I crave pizza and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing around but a Pizza Hut. I think to myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be as bad as I remember.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And then I eat there. And then it is. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fall for that tonight. So instead of a carbo-filled meal of pasta, I had steak for dinner.<\/p>\n Today<\/b><\/font> I keep a little notebook with me in the car and I jot notes during the day, which is how I remember what to blog at night. However, I left it in the car, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m on the second floor of the Days Inn in South Bend, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the most attractive place, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to just wing this. If I forget anything, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll add it tomorrow.<\/p>\n I was going to comment on how horrible a driver I am at night, but I realized it might alarm my parents who read my blog, so I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mention it.<\/p>\n Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes, my ass. I counted all of 14.<\/p>\n Carcass count: 4 \u00c2\u00bd deer, 1 fox, 5 raccoons, countless unidentified animals.<\/p>\n The land of the toll booth: Every time I passed a sign for Eau Claire, I thought I should beat someone up for making noises about the Bear.<\/p>\n I was psyched to get to Minnesota because I knew they had NPR (from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marketplace is produced by Minnesota Public Radio\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Of course, just my luck, I caught them during their Summer Pledge Drive. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t handle more than a few minutes of it.<\/p>\n Adam said tonight, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I miss you. I wish I were there with you right now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Tonight I entered my new home time zone.<\/p>\n Since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten so far, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve decided to make a detour. At the rate I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d reach Boston either late, late tomorrow night (it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about 874 miles from South Bend, with no time zone change) or really early on Monday. Since my mom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not coming in till Tuesday, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know the folks we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re staying with, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to head to New Brunswick tomorrow to visit with the Tweedle Twirp. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll still be in Boston by about 4 or 5 on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did I call this a real part of the world yesterday? Don’t know what I was thinking…. Yesterday Jamestown, ND 752.10 miles Too many pit stops to count Montana may have higher speed limits, less road work, and more interesting scenery, but North Dakota is way better because the rest stops are totally cool (vending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jennyandadam.com\/Jenny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Jamestown, ND
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752.10 miles
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Too many pit stops to count<\/p>\n
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South Bend, IN
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847.2 miles<\/p>\n
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From the border of Illinois to the border of Indiana there were eight, count them eight tolls of 40 cents each. I would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve happily paid $2 once. Hell, for the privilege of stopping only once, they could\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve charged me $3.<\/p>\n
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I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Really? Because I was wishing you were here instead<\/i> of me right now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n