January 22 Day 1: Chicago to Rochester

So first let me say I am sorry it took me a little while to blog about the travels to Seattle, it was pretty hard from the road, although I did have internet access I was pretty exhausted from the long days of moving and driving. Then when I got here to Seattle, I misplaced my USB cable from my camera and I figured that without the pictures it really wasn't worth the post since I would want to go back and put them in later. Sooooo...without further delay here is the story of my travels...

Day 1: Started off in Naperville at the Petrucks house (aka my Chicago mom and dad aka Erin's mom and dad) and I took the train back into the city to be at the condo for the cleaning lady. As she cleaned (and did a fantastic job by the way!! ) I ran some last minute errands and finished packing my car. I then headed out to the airport to pick up Ryan's mom Sue who flew out to Chicago to drive with me to Seattle. It was so wonderful for her to volunteer to come with me. I had a great time getting to know her better and share an amazing journey with her. We headed out on I-90 and drove about five and a half hours to Rochester, Minnesota for our first pit stop. We had a very uneventful day as we checked three states off our journey (Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) and crossed the Mississippi River. It was dark out most of our trip, which is why I have don't have pictures from this day of the trip. It was super cold in Minnesota that night (-20 I believe), this meant that Sue and I needed to have our evening cocktail of Stella Artois delivered to our door. No problem for the wonderful staff at the restaurant of our Best Western. It was an early night as we had a long day of driving ahead of us the next day (our goal was to get to Billings, Montana the next day). Lights out!!