Day 5: Toledo to Some Travel Plaza in Pennsylvania

We stopped for lunch and gas at some travel plaza in Ohio (State Motto: Land of the All Day Thunderstorms). Travel Plazas are apparently The Thing along Midwest toll roads. They give you the opportunity to get gas and food, with all the convenience of a rest area. And the rest rooms are generally cleaner.

The interesting thing about Ohio – today at least – is that it rained almost continuously from the time we crossed over from Indiana all the way to the Pennsylvania border. It just kept coming down. In buckets! I can’t remember seeing it rain that hard, for that long, in a long, long time. And I’m from Oregon!

Once we got into Pennsylvania (State Motto: We Have Lots Of Cities But We Won’t Let You See ‘Em), the weather improved dramatically. What was weird about Pennsylvania is that we drove through a big chunk of the state and never saw one city or town! They were there; we kept seeing signs for them, but we never saw one. Even Pittsburgh! As far as we know, it doesn’t exist. It seems that the highway system in this state is designed to avoid populated areas. Nothing but trees and an occasional building.

And about those toll roads. After a while it really does begin to add up. We’ve probably ponied up around $25 for various tolls!

About three quarters of the way across the state we stopped at yet another travel plaza to get something to eat and load up on Starbuck’s one more time. As we left, I glanced at a map and saw that D.C. is only 171 miles away. We thought it was closer to 250! Sweet!