West Coast Bound: Day 2 ~ From corn fields to cocktails.

Last night was tough. We didn’t arrive at our hotel in West Virginia until quite late. By the time we unloaded and unwound it was close to midnight. Chewy was on high alert, guarding our room most of the night. We woke up with one thing in mind, coffee! We stayed in Charleston, WV and Google maps told us that there was a Starbucks in town. It did not tell us that it was in a mall and that you had to pay to park in their garage to get there. We started our day with a little chuckle but nevertheless caffeinated.

We can sum up our travel day in one word…corn. We drove over 430 miles today and it all looked the same. Miles and miles of flat corn fields. We thankfully left West Virginia and entered Ohio. We didn’t capture the “Welcome to Ohio” sign but we did capture this one and we captured Indiana and Illinois! We lessened the bug population in all three states today. We enjoyed 70 mph speed limits and straight roads. A stark contrast to yesterday.

We are loving the east to west time difference as we gained an hour yesterday crossing into the Central Time Zone which helped us land in Champaign, IL around 4:30 p.m. Downtown Champaign was really cute with lots of restaurants and coffee shops in walking distance to our hotel. We enjoyed quite the culinary experience at a restaurant across the street called Distihl. The food was excellent, they brew their own beers and there were donuts on their dessert menu! Wine never tasted so good after two very long days of driving. Ev has been without pizza for two days therefore he was ecstatic to devour one at dinner.

Above this beer flight is an order of fried asparagus. OMG! Delicious! Can you tell that we’ve been living on fast food for two days?!?

After dinner we all took a walk in West Side Park which was a gorgeous park the size of a city block just a few minutes from our hotel. Chewy and Ev had a chance to stretch their legs and run around before we called it a day. There were dozens of beautiful, old oak trees in the park, flower gardens, fountains and statues. Chewy was trying very hard to catch the squirrels that would race to the top of the oak trees and drop acorns on him. It was a like a scene out of the children’s movie The Nut Job.

The most memorable thing about Champaign were the people. Complete strangers were saying hello to us as we walked around town and through the park. Tomorrow we plan to stop at The University of Illinois campus on our way out of town which is just a few miles from our hotel.

We are one day closer to home.