I have been feeling increasingly claustrophobic and cooped up in my own apartment lately. I don't work from home anymore, I live at work, and that is not great for anyone's work/life balance. So to try and kick the cabin fever I decided to pack up my car, who I have named Natasha and should be referred to as such, and we went out on the road. It seemed a lot of the important people in my life moved out east recently, so I figured I could see everyone in one road trip and work from their apartments on the weekdays.
However, this road trip started with a big boy of a drive. After a half day of work, I got inside Natasha and hit I-90 heading out of Chicago. My end destination was Norfolk, VA. That's right kids, daddy had a 13.5 hour drive ahead, not accounting for stops. And I have to say, after absolutely dominating that drive and getting there only 5 minutes later than my GPS originally said I would, I think I have reach Midwestern Dad levels of driving endurance. As soon as I get any good at golf it's over for you bitches.
After more than half a day on the road, I drove through 5 states if you include starting in Illinois. Some of these states rocked, literally and figuratively, and some of them are named Indiana. Here's my official power ranking of 5 randomly specific US States:
5. Indiana
Of course Indiana was the worst state I drove through, it might be the worst US state overall. The entire state is under construction, and for the literal 40 miles that it isn't, nobody knows how to fucking drive. I have nothing good to say about Indiana. I wish I could just delete this state from existence and make a new "Greatest Lake."
4. Illinois
I'm not an Illinois hater, but I am a Chicago traffic hater. I left my apartment at 11 AM on a Wednesday and it STILL took me almost an hour to get out of the city. Now I know this because I aced US Geography in high school and college, but for those of you that don't know, Chicago is only about 20-ish miles long, and I am not on the far north side by any stretch. It should not take me that long to travel that short of a distance. Fuck traffic, I hate it. But other than that Chicago is a very pretty city and I was a little bit sad to leave her.
3. Ohio
It physically pains me to put Ohio this high on the list, but holy shit southeastern Ohio is actually kinda beautiful. I wouldn't call them mountains because that's the last thing we need is to tell Ohioans that they have beaches and mountains in the same state, but the foothills were beautiful in the early afternoon when I made my way through the Beaverdam area. This was also the part of the country where I saw a man driving his 1980s pickup truck down the interstate with two goddamn stallions just chilling in the bed. That highway also later turned into a regular road with stoplights out of nowhere so honestly fuck that road in general.
2. Virginia
This is my first destination, so I can't give it too much credit for driving through it. Two knocks right off the bat: there is literally nothing between the state border and Richmond. I was undoubtedly the only car on the road and the only light available for miles for a good two hours. Secondly, I got caught by a giant barge coming into Norfolk, like 20 minutes from my destination, absolute buzzkill and made me realize how exhausted I was. However, the drive down the coast coming into Norfolk is unmatched, even if I came into town in the middle of the night. The smell of saltwater in the air is heavenly after sitting in a stale ass car for over 12 hours. Highly recommend Norfolk so far too, nice city and they're big obsessed with mermaids.
1. West Virginia
I mean holy shit, mountain mama. This state was absolutely beautiful. I'm going to gripe from the start just to get through the negative: climbing mountains in a 6 cylinder Hyundai is incredibly difficult, there were times I couldn't get over 60 MPH and I wanted to absolutely fly through these mountains. Other than that I have nothing but good things to say.
One particular point in the trip I wanted to talk about was an full on revelation moment for me. I had always seen on TV and in movies, the towns in West Virginia that were literally built into the mountain, and centered around the gas plant or coal mine in town. But on this drive I realized that shit is real. I was about 30 miles outside of the legendarily named town of Moss, West Virginia. I drop past a sheer drop in the mountain, and there was a town built into the side of it. This town was straight out of the movies, like some "Out of the Furnace" shit. It was a giant coal plant built into the side of the mountain, and the rest of the town of 3-500 was built around it. There was 1 restaurant, maybe 2 gas stations, and a metric ass load of single story ranch homes. It was the coolest town I've ever seen in my life.
Added bonus-when you drive down the mountains in WV, you can literally take your foot completely away from the pedals and just coast at about 80 MPH down the side of a mountain, absolutely liberating.
I saw so many gorgeous landscapes on this trip. America truly is an amazing country if you just take a look around. Bottom line, take more road trips kids.
-TM
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