Day One: Scranton, PA & Morgantown, WV

Miles driven: 619
Car time: 10 hours, 50 minutes

Day one of our cross country road trip took us from Boston, through Connecticut, Pennsylvania (with a stop in Scranton, PA) and Maryland, before we pulled into Morgantown, West Virginia at about 8:30PM last night.

Sadie proved that she is smarter than her cat carrier (and possibly her owners), by using the zipper to bust free of it about 2 hours into the trip. We've learned our lesson: the pathetic meowing immediately ceased and she spent the rest of the drive in her cardboard massage box the back seat, on passenger Ashley's lap, trying to figure out a way to get over driver Trevor's left shoulder into his lap (an impossibility we hope), or balanced surprisingly-not-that-precariously on the center console.


We saw the first cows of the trip (think there'll be any more of those in the Midwest?), and listened to the first of our road trip mix CDs, made for us by some lovely friends - strangely enough, Sadie appears to be really into Spanish music (Thanks Aaron!). Trevor lasted 6 hours into the trip before mentioning Dwight Eisenhower, and we can now say we've seen James Buchanan's birthplace (Hey, we saw the sign for it. We'll add it to the list with JFK's birthplace - we haven't been to the specific house, but it's on a street in Massachusetts that we've walked by a million times.).

Our one stop for the day was in Scranton, PA. Yes, we stopped there solely because that is the setting for 'The Office,' one of favorite television shows. We had directions to Poor Richards Pub, a bar that the show's characters frequent, where we thought we could have lunch. But, once we found it (it's inside a bowling alley!) and got out of the car, we realized it was much too hot and muggy to leave Sadie in the car for longer than a few minutes. Good thing we'd already decided that, because when we went in for the requisite tourist photos, it was closed.


Other Office sites that we passed: Alfredo's Pizza Cafe & Steamtown Mall.

With a pub lunch having been a bust, we grabbed our first road trip food - veggie hoagies - and ate them on the road.


One traffic jam and five hours later, the sun was setting and we were winding our way through the mountains of Maryland and West Virginia.


We arrived at Jessica's parents' house to a delicious late stirfry dinner and cheesecake dessert. Massive thanks to Cathy and Jeff for hosting us, cat allergies and all!

And with that, day one is complete. Today, we explore Morgantown a bit in the morning and will have breakfast with Jessica's mom, Cathy, before heading north to Michigan, with a brief stop in Cleveland at the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Over and out.