The first 24

Lexi and I headed out at right after pictures, 7:00 on the dot. Lu took the first turn driving. Party!

I still have all my fav cd's from way back in the day, and we brought them and jammed out. Dixie Chics, queens of country, a bunch of Now cd's. So fun to crank them and sing at the top of our lungs!

We decided to stop at each state line sign, something I have always wanted to do! First state line - Pennsylvania!

It was just a quick drive through PA, and then Ohio! I drove after Pennsylvania, and on into Ohio.

Alexis went to sleep around 11, and I drove from 11-2. I started listening to To Kill a Mockingbird - so good. I loved it as a teen, I love it as an adult. It's so fun to listen to a well written book. I was even going to name a daughter Scout for a long time. I had even sort of thought of it for one of the little girls, but Scout Ray doesn't work. 

At 2am, we pulled into a really nice rest stop to catch a quick nappy. It was well lit, lots of cars were there, and we both felt very safe. Aaaaand, our quick wink turned into 4 hours! We were pretty comfy and slept really well. At 6 though I woke up and was ready to roll. Lexi got a good 7 hours of sleep, so she took the first leg. I asked her how many lighthouses I could see without making her crazy. She said 2, so it was on! This little guy, Vermillion light, was just about 15 minutes away from our route, and just look how cute he is!

The sun had just come up and the lighting was so pretty.

#happy

Such a gorgeous little beach park on Lake Erie.

It was there that Lexi said, "what happened to your shirt?" What the heck?! It was even wet and I hadn't even noticed! I hadn't had anything that color and it was such a mystery. We joked that someone had pranked us at our rest stop nap, cause we had left the moon roof open a little. In the end, we decided it was from the cd case that had gotten wet somehow, and dirty from the car floor, or from being like,10 years old.

Indy!

If I was ever governor of a state, I would make our state line signs in a safe place so fun loving tourists like us can safely take pics without the fear of being hit by a car. Indiana's was pretty good.

Still having a blast.

Just because she's cute. And road trip snacks are delicious.

Since neither of us have ever been to Michigan, we decided to take a quick detour. We set out to go to the most southern lighthouse there, which took about an hour to get to the light. Pure Michigan!

Eeeeee!

Lake Michigan! The water was so clear and gorgeous! And salt free. I tasted it.

Sadly, the cute little pier out to the cute little St. Joseph lighthouse was closed because they were doing renovations to the light. Boo!

Still fun though. This tough guy has frozen solid in the winter.

The beach was crazy busy for Labor Day weekend.

Someday I will walk down this pier and see the cute light in all its glory.

We grabbed our only real meal of the day, a DQ chicken basket, and headed into Illinois. This was, by far the scariest state sign. Right on the freeway, tiny shoulder, super lots of cars.

We pushed through the pain, quickly snapped, and ran back to the car!

Duh, duh, duh. Then it happened. We paid tons of tolls, but Illinois had the worst setup. Every few miles we had to stop and pay $1.50. After one of those stops, as i was accelerating, the car started jerking weirdly. Next acceleration it did the same. And repeat. The fuel malfunction/check engine light came on and we pulled over and called Matt. He did some research and we found one of the few places that was actually open on a Sunday. :/ long story short, after 3 hours (naptime) at a Firestone, it was determined that the vtech sensor (or something like that) was failing because of sludge buildup, which is a malfunction that Honda has realized, and because of that, the part we needed is brand new, and only sold by Honda. Which wouldn't be open to even see if they had it till Tuesday. Uuuuugh. Matt conferenced with David, we talked to the Firestone guys, and we all decided it would be ok to keep trucking. We put some fuel injector cleaner, good gas, and carefully and gently headed on our cautious way.

We just accelerated slowly and didn't push it too hard and it was ok. (By day 2  the light turned off and there's no jerking! Prayers answered!)

Wisconsin state sign knows where it's at! This cool sign was at a super safe rest area with no fear of being crushed by oncoming traffic. Perfect.

By the 24 hour mark we had gone exactly 1000 miles. With 2 fun detours, and a not so fun 3-hour detour, we still did pretty good!

And that wraps up a fabulous first 24 hours of our super fun sophomore road trip 2015!