Day 3

Indianapolis loves their NASCAR and their hot weather. That's all that was on the news. The Brickyard 400 Qualifier was today. Jeff Gordon and Richard Petty were all over the TV. I decided I would go for my run and look for Peyton Manning. No such luck - but I did get a drive by view of Lucus Oil Stadium where the Colts play and it is the future home of Super Bowl 46. Every year when the Super Bowl comes around and that long Roman Numeral is stretched across the baseball caps, I think, "that's my age! and that's a big ole number!" After breakfast, we hit a backroad instead of interstate and visited a farmer's market and a small town with some fun shopping. We were loving Indiana - except for the humidity. Once we hit Ohio we were back on interstate stopping for me to run and enjoying our Indiana tomatoes for lunch. Honestly, Ohio began to get kind of boring. We switched drivers about 2:30, and soon knew we needed a longer stop to give us a boost so we could make the drive into Buffalo for the night. About that time we saw an exit to Geneva on the Lake. We knew it would give us a glimpse of Lake Erie, so we took it. This ended up being our pearl for the day! This is a lakefront gateway vacation spot with quaint cottages, that overlook Lake Erie. There was live music, food, souvenirs, a great place to be. We stayed for a couple of hours and felt refreshed and ready to hit the road. Thank you Ohio! Pennsylvania was the next state. I'm saving my PA run for Amish country on the back end of the trip. Then our adventure for the day really began. Thinking we could just stop and get a room did not work for us tonight. NY is full of Tollways, and once you are on them and you are listening to your Garmin, Natasha, it's hard to get off! We missed our exit, couldn't turn around for miles so we kept going. When we did pull off to get a room there was no room at the inn - anywhere. Back to the toll road and eventually a state service center with a 24 hour Arby's, we weary travelers put Natasha to bed and took our laptops in and started looking for rooms. NO OCCUPANCY - until finally - The Red Carpet Inn - 40 minutes away - we booked it and were on our way. Once we arrived to the Red Carpet Inn that had green carpet, we were giving the key to room 101. This is a place the Giddeons don't even visit. No chain only a dead bolt. We lock the door and move all the unbolted furniture in front of the door. I've seen too many investigative reports on hotel bedspreads so I immediatly pull mine to the floor. There is no light in the shower/commode area so we pull in a floor lamp. After all our rearranging of furniture we place Lori's metal road buddy who I nick named "the boyfriend" on the table between us and went to sleep.