The next morning, we got a decent start on the drive. We did spoil ourselves with a stop for lunch in Hays, KS at a brewpub called Lb (liquid bread)!
The beer was very tasty, especially the wheats.
I'd love to go there again. While I have told myself many times as I made the drive between Denver and St Louis on I-70 "I'm so glad I will never have to make this drive again", I just have a hard time believing it anymore. So at some point in the future, I'm sure we'll be back at Lb. Then we stopped for dinner in St Louis with my dad and stepmom.
This was Halloween night, although we didn't feel very festive. It was fun seeing people dressed up at dinner, but we were just completely exhausted and hoping to get close to Indianapolis. We made it into Indiana that night. Sunday morning, we woke up, ready to finish our drive. We were on our way home. We made one stop in Ohio at a dog park we found for Lilly to play in...
It was a great place! We were glad she was able to get some exercise.
There was a pond inside the park - Lilly will wade into the water, but she doesn't swim. If we could take her here more often, we'd have her swimming in no time!
Then we were on our way again. Cruising along, we tuned in the Bronco game through the cell phone, and just after they lost and we started listening to the Minnesota v Green Bay game... the lights on the dash flickered. The charger stopped charging the phone. I just thought it was weird. But luckily, my brilliant husband thought we should pull over. No! I said. We are in the middle of nowhere! But we stopped at a rest stop a mile or two away. And the car didn't start again. We let it rest, walked Lilly, went to the bathroom. Cleaned the battery terminals. (At least I think that's what Chris did.) Got a jump. And it was so weak, we knew it wouldn't go anywhere. We waited here...
Yup. East Ohio.
And there was an open bottle of wine in the car (leftover from the wedding), so we decided to have a sip. All we had were our coffee cups, but they worked!
We called AAA. Here comes Bill!
He towed the car a few miles down the highway to a huge shopping complex. He left it at a car shop, and pointed out the nearest hotel, which we could walk to. At this point, we knew there was no way we would be at work the next day. It was annoying, and a little stressful, but what can you do? There was no way for us to get out of there. We checked into the hotel,
and had a snack at Buffalo Wild Wings where we watched the end of the evening football games. Then we headed back to the hotel, and unpacked our Wii!
Some awesome friends gave us the Wii for our wedding gift and we got to break it in. We also had growlers in the car that we had bought in Colorado, so we enjoyed one of those with beer from Tommyknockers (brewery in Idaho Springs).
So, overall, it was a good night, even though this was a hotel without a pool. Oh well, you can't win them all!
The next morning, Chris picked up the car by 1030am and we were (we hoped) REALLY on our way home this time.
Both of our jobs had been understanding about us missing on Monday, and it felt kind of fun to not be back at work - our vacation, and our time together, continued for an extra day!!
We were able to take our time driving back - since we left in the morning, we stopped at a couple of (of course) brewpubs on the way. In Harrisburg, there were 2 breweries - Appalachian Brewery
And Troegs!
We didn't even really hit traffic on the way back into the city! Bonus!
We were SO relieved to get home and get the car unloaded. There was a lot of mail waiting for us when we got home after 3 weeks away!
And I guess this concludes the story of Chris and Shelli's honeymoon, which was absolutely perfect from start to finish!
