Why Does Midwest Radio Suck?!

Miles logged so far: 478

Hours in the car: 8 hours 12 minutes

Bathroom breaks: 4

Gas stops: 2

So Rich and I have left Bemidji, Minnesota and are well on our way to Brooklyn. Yesterday we had plans to leave BY 8:00am, but we all know those types of things never work out. Instead, we mosied our way around, had a leisurely breakfast with my parents, which was delish by the way, if you're reading this. We got caffeinated, showered, and then began the struggle to get all our luggage in the car. It's not like we brought a U-Haul with us or anything, just a Nissan Maxima… With a little bit of wiggling we were able to pack it all into the car and we can even see out the back window right now!

I'm also proud at how little we've spent our first day. We ate breakfast at home, so we didn't have to spend anything there, nor on coffee. A few days before we had bought mucho snackos so that we would be able to limit the amount we spent on gas station snacks as well as having control and prior choice over the things we would eat on the road. Thanks to this great little idea of our's, we didn't have to buy lunch or snacks and were instead able to munch on the granola bars, bagels, and fruit we had on hand. We did splurge on dinner last night with Rich's friend Amelia, but we figured we deserved it after all our time in the car.

Yesterday we went from Bemidji to Duluth and then stopped to stretch our legs in my favorite little port town. Duluth is a cute little town to me, but I didn't even realize that Rich had never seen any of the great lakes, so he was veeery excited. Both of us were still amazed at just how BIG Lake Superior is, I mean, you can't see the other side. It's like an ocean it's so big! So we checked out some of the sights on the pier, walked by the water, and then headed back to the car to get back on the road to… MADISON!!

The drive there was beautiful, but there really wasn't much to look at so we entertained ourselves with the radio and playing twenty questions. Why are there only country or top 40 stations in the Midwest? I mean, what's up with that?!? W scrolled through all the stations at least twice and the best we could come up with was a "Current Hip-Hop" station. Yuck. I can only take so much auto tune and Jay-Z remixes…

So we finally made it to our destination around 7:30 and proceeded to wander for another 30 minutes trying to find Amelia's place, which was tucked away in this little cul de sac. Ugh. So we arrived, unpacked our bags and then headed for some dinner. We were starving and tired and worn out from driving so Amelia packed us in her car and took us to a little place called Sala Thai. It was the cutest, most interesting little place I've ever been. Amelia said it was pretty new, but they'd clearly already put lots of energy into their décor. There were paper umbrellas, paintings, statues, flags… you could barely see the wall beneath all of it. They even had a little fountain tucked away inside this place! We got our food and chatted with Amelia and then headed back to her house to relax and get a good night's sleep.

This morning we actually DID wake up in time to leave by 8:15, which is much closer to our goal, so we're getting better….