Left home at 8:22 AM, not as early as we wanted. Started with 217987.9 miles on the car, but it just got new tires (and an alignment), a new timing belt, new wipers, and was cleaned up so it should be in good shape. The weather was slightly muggy but not hot, and slightly cloudy. After filling the gas tank we headed west on I-70 and picked up the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Breezewood. The road wound through the ridges of the folded mountains and a tunnel cut through the Allegheny Front, the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau. The rock layers are severely folded to the east and gently undulating to the west of the front. The tunnel cut right into the mountain but was lined with white tiles so the rocks were not visible. Just as well, there was two-way traffic plus lots of fumes, and I had been falling asleep earlier while driving (except when Sharleen noticed from the map we were on a scenic section, then I tried to stay awake) so there wasn't time to do much looking even if the walls had been transparent.

As we emerged from the tunnel onto the plateau it was raining lightly. We stopped at the service plaza at Somerset and switched. I got the computer out and for some reason am not as sleepy as when I was driving even though falling asleep while using the computer might be less dangerous. I'm learning Word while entering this text, trying to see if it really can save the text as an HTML file. We are getting close to the Ohio border, guess we'll have to stop and feed Sharleen soon.

We did stop to eat, I knew it would be a mistake. At the first service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike all they had for food was McDonalds, not a vegetarian's first choice. So I grabbed a few brochures to see if I could find a better place. I picked up the Youngstown Visitor's Guide and did a quick check for restaurants. Looked like the next exit might be a good choice, but it was only a mile away so there wasn't time to study the material. A couple listings caught my eye with the word vegetarian, one was on South Ave, the word Boardman followed in the listing. I looked at the map I had grabbed and found that South Ave and Boardman were two intersecting streets. I navigated us there and found nothing but an industrial type area, no eating places at all. I searched the guide for a better map, it had no city map at all. After looking at other available maps I found the target restaurant was in a small town that we could have easily reached much earlier. I would certainly design a city guide much differently. First it would have a good map with readable text. This would be right up front, maybe just inside the cover. It would show places important to a traveler by color symbols. A good index would also be very easy to find. We found another place downtown, parked quite a few blocks away an ate there. It was ok, not worth all the running. Afterward we took a few wrong turns and had a minor tour of some of the more run down parts of town. We're back on the road west again, 79 miles from Toledo at this moment. I'm running down my laptop battery, checking to see if the second battery will kick in. The battery level is at 18%, hope that means the first one. I'm playing a midi file while typing, slightly annoying Sharleen. The laptop gets pretty hot on the bottom; guess pentiums do that. Just for fun I just tried my polarized sunglasses, I can see the screen very well. On the old laptop the screen went dark when I did that.

We had to stop and eat again, also got gas. We arrived at our Michigan destination a bit after 9 PM (EDT), George Plue's place. I had gone to college with George. It was starting to get dark as we drove in the lane, George and the two girls were there waiting for us, his wife Konnie was off with a flashlight searching the woods for the pet rabbit that had escaped. She came back shortly carrying the rabbit. Stayed up late with George playing with computers, maps, and GPS. Finally got to bed some time after 1 AM.

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