Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio

We drove around 500 miles again yesterday and managed to cover 4 states. We left Iowa around 10 ish and there was dense fog and it was very cool. We've seen many roadside stops that claim to be the biggest, best, smallest, longest of whatever they're claiming such as "Iowa 80- The World's Largest Truckstop" Just how do they know, anyway? Illinois was greener than I expected and we stopped there for lunch. It was 88 degrees and was veeeeery humid. I guess we'd better get used to humid! We hit pretty heavy traffic in the Chicago area and there were more semi trucks then there were cars. It was difficult to read road signs. I've been taking pictures of all of the states welcome signs and we missed the "Welcome to Indiana". The first city was Gary, Indiana and was not a place you'd wanna stop. Crime is pretty heavy there. We also entered our first "toll road"on the turnpike. Neither of us were really clear how a toll road worked. You take a ticket at the first booth and it has a little chart of how much you'll need to pay to get off at the various exits. There are also "travel centers" that are kind of like rest stops, gas stations, and fast food all rolled in to one. You can only use the travel centers for gas or food or else you'd need to pay the toll upon exiting the freeway and have to get a new ticket upon reentering. We were on the first toll road for 2 hours. There are lots of farms along the roadside with big red farmhouses, just as you'd expect a farm to look. We got to Ohio at dusk and had to go 118 more miles to get to our hotel in Sandusky. Sandusky apparently is a big tourist spot. It's right on Lake Erie and it's the home of Cedar Rapids Theme Park. We got to our hotel after 9 and the kids were beyond ready to get out of the car. We entered the building that our room was in and - no kidding - it was about 120 degrees. We opened our room and the AC had been cranked so it was much cooler. I went to close the curtain and there was a brown smear of who-knows-what on it. The room also hadn't been cleaned too well because the toilet seat was all the way up and there was a lid to some kind of aerosol can on the ground. I told Nick that "we can't stay here, this place is disgusting". "It's only one night, we'll go to sleep and leave first thing in the morning" he told me. Nick went back out to get stuff out of the car and saw a guy running from the parking lot into the bushes. As he was on his way back an RV tried to drive under the underpass entrance and hit our bldg! There were now chunks of concrete falling. That was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back and he was convinced to leave too. We packed up all our stuff, got back in the car. Lauren about lost it getting back in the car and Andrew was too tired to protest. We got to the Marriott in Sandusky after 11:30. It was MUCH better. So now we're all packed up, kids are clean, fed, watered and we're about to get back on the turnpike at 10:45 EST. We've got 50-60 miles left of Ohio, then Pennsylvania, then we'll be in NJ! It's the LAST DAY of driving Wooooohoooooo!