Canada to California: Day 2

My car was packed to the brim with suitcases that we had brought into the hotel the night before. We are the worst packers in the universe. I think we brought in SIX suit cases through the snowy parking lot in Illinois.I tried my best to put most of it into one or two that we could access easily through the drivers seat of my car since the other doors were inaccessible from the trailer keeping it in.

After the coldest shower I’ve had in my entire life we were on the road again to start day two of our drive and headed back out on the road. The breakfast lady from the Indiana hotel gave us a few bagels, and fruit for the road and told us to have safe travels. I kind of wanted to hug her.

The first half or more of the drive across the nation was quite boring. It looked the same as what we were used to, and we thought we’d be in the clear with these sunny dry roads in Indiana.

But as soon as we hit Illinois we spotted 7 cars who had spun out into the ditches a span of 15 minutes. The roads got a little bad for an hour or so and then we were fine again once we got to Missouri.

Once the roads were dry enough, I took my chance at driving the U-Haul for about 140km’s, while The Guy got a bit of sleep. I’ve never been so tense in my life. My back wasn’t touching the drivers seat and my knuckles were white as a sheet of paper. To get my mind off the U-Haul swaying in the wind and having huge transport trailers whizzing passed causing the trailer in the back to feel like it’s whipping back and fourth (it wasn’t, but it felt terrifying since the steering wheel on the U-Haul was very touchy), I listened to some radio tunes. A few songs came on which reminded me of my old co-worker, Julie (Hi JULIE!!!) and since I’m terrible at getting lyrics right, I sang as much as I could… which then made me laugh and think of the good times Julie and I had, especially the last few days before I left. Can’t believe I was singing country songs, but I was. I blame it on the good memories with Jules ;)

90 minutes later we swapped seats and I was in the passengers side again. We had some snacks (unfortunately this flavour of vitamin water mango/peach, is limited edition), got some gas and I took some photos while passing through St. Louis. Terrible photos but we didn’t stop very long to get many photos, so most of these pictures are from the U-Haul.

We made it to Oklahoma around 7 that evening and got some more fuel. That U-Haul guzzles gas like no other. We were stopping every 3-4 hours to fill the tank up. We also lived on McDonalds the entire trip. Funny how certain McDonald’s are so different from one another. The burger buns in Indiana were fluffier and in Oklahoma they didn’t have root beer. ;)

Around 11pm I spotted a funny sign on the highway: “Leaving kikapoo Nation“ — we were so exhausted at that point that I found it incredibly hilarious. I think I had laughter-tears.

At 2am we realized we needed to fill up the U-Haul again. We were in McLean Texas this second night, and unfortunately nothing was open. We were cutting it close a few times with the gas light being on through some of the drive while looking for gas stations. They were so few and far between on some stretches of the road. We came across one and we both jumped out to use their washroom before filling up the beast with gas. Most of the gas stations will not take Canadian credit cards (you have to put in your ZIP code when you pay) so we were paying for gas with cash the entire trip up until this point.

The station was under renovation and the guys who were there overnight were putting tiles on the floor so they weren’t the employees of the gas station. The friendly Texan men (with their fun accents no less) let us inside, and told us that the guy opening the station wouldn’t be there for a few more hours. After a bit of hmming and hawing, The Guy looked up on the internet if/how he could use his Canadian credit card and also access a ZIP code to get some gas. Well guess what? You can use the numbers from your postal code and put three zero’s at the end, and it will work. GAH!! Brilliant. We were tired. So we took a 3 hour nap in the parking lot of the gas station and went on our merry way once the sun rose.Check back on Friday for the final day and a half of the drive where we made it to the desert and only had one radio station. Which was in Spanish.