Day 5: Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Lynne made us a delicious breakfast of cinnamon raison toast, strawberry orange juice, fruit salad, etc.  After having some long days of driving, we left Westmont feeling so rejuvenated and ready for the next part of the journey!

Outside Lynne and Phil's home

Indiana was like Iowa in that their state line sign was above us on a bridge, but at least this time I was prepared to take a picture!  We stopped in Bristol, Indiana to get food and use the bathroom (really creepy flickery lights in the bathroom…eek!).

Indiana scenery

We made it to Ohio and we stopped for gas in Petersburg, right before the Pennsylvania state line.  It turned out that it was a good thing that we stopped for gas when we did because a huge thunderstorm started.  Another perk of being from Southern California is that we don’t have too many thunderstorms and we both agreed that this storm was the loudest, wettest, windiest one we had ever experienced! So we waited out the storm at the gas station and watched the river of water float past us as well as watched the gas station lose power! It was so exciting but we were glad we didn’t try and drive in that storm.  By the time we got to the Pennsylvania border, it was still stormy so we had to take the state line picture from inside the car!  We stayed in the car partly because it was too rainy outside but also because we didn’t want to hold up a metal camera in the middle of lightning!

Ohio scenery

First signs of the storm

Looking more and more gloomy

At the gas station, waiting for the storm to pass

After the rain came and went

We finally reached our last leg of the journey!  It was definitely bittersweet as we entered our final destination of Pittsburgh.  Since Matthew drove through four states on this day, he was upgraded from champion driver to supreme driver! We got to Matthew’s apartment right when the thunderstorm reached Pittsburgh so we had to make a mad dash to unpack all of the things from the truck bed so not everything would get soaked.

First sight of Pittsburgh

Entering the city of Pittsburgh 

Matthew digging his things out of the back of the truck bed!

We had so much fun navigating our way across the country together and we definitely hope to do many more road trips in the future! We hope you enjoy hearing about it just as much as we did while doing it!