On The Road: Day 3

Lucky me!! Tomorrow is the Indianapolis 500 and that means that EVERY hotel within a 70 mile radius from Indianapolis is full. I had no idea that this was going on so I booked a room last night for a hotel in Terre Haute, IN. The original plan was to stay in Hoosierville, IN. The reason I wanted to stay near Hoosierville was that I took Intro to American Studies with Professor Nathan and we learned all about the history of basketball. Ever since I took that class Sophomore year and saw the movie Hoosiers, I've wanted to visit Hoosierville. Well, I tried to look up hotels in the area and nothing came up on priceline, expedia, or hotwire. So I expanded my search, found a place for about $65 in Terre Haute. Not bad, right? I figured, I just want to see Hoosierville and then we can be on our way, so staying about 20 minutes away wouldn't kill me. I'll get to why I'm lucky in a couple paragraphs.

So here's what happened today: In the morning we woke up at about 6am, ate breakfast at our hotel in Harrisonburg, and hit the road around 7am. Now, I'm a HUGE fan of chick-flicks so I suddenly remembered that Win A Date With Tad Hamilton took place in Fraziers Bottom, WV. Naturally, I just HAD to see it. We took about 3 hours to get there and took a couple pictures of things that said Fraziers Bottom on it (needless to say, there's not much too look at. It's very country, complete with cows, sheep, and horses. Oh, and LOTS of green). We needed gas so we took that opportunity to stretch our legs and switch drivers. Then we continued driving to Cincinnati, OH. We stopped in Cincinnati for a 4pm dinner (we skipped lunch because we were driving so we were pretty hungry at this point) and then got back on the road. So far, we've only spent a maximum of 4 hours in the car at a time (I think).

Now here's the funny part of the story. We got in the car after dinner in Cincinnati and headed to try to find Hoosierville. We got to Brazil, IN with hardly any trouble. They were doing some construction on the highway so we missed our exits a couple of times, but nothing too bad. Then we drove around for a while in what looked like a residential area. We used our phones to look up Hoosierville since my GPS did not recognize that as a location. The phone showed Hoosierville as literally a block of land that we drove around in less than 5 minutes. I think Skidmore is bigger than Hoosierville!! There were no signs that said that where we were was Hoosierville, so I'm not entirely convinced that it was (it didn't look like the movie setting). After driving around and seeing cute little cottage-like houses we gave up and headed for Terre Haute for the hotel. Hoosierville was an EPIC fail.

OK, so why am I lucky?? When we got to the hotel and checked in, the lady at the front said, "We're glad you're here and we're glad you could get a room." I asked why and she explained the situation, which I explained in the beginning of this post. Sure enough, after I had checked in I heard a few people asking if they had any vacancies in the hotel. Wow!! I would say that makes me pretty lucky to have a place to stay tonight.

Tomorrow we have another long day of driving ahead of us. The plan as of now is to leave Terre Haute around 8, have a late lunch/early dinner in Chicago, IL before arriving at our final destination in Bloomington, MN at around 7 or 8pm. We will be spending two nights in Bloomington so that we have a full day to shop at the Mall of America without having to worry about where we're staying or when we're leaving. After that, it's off to Omaha, NE!! Be sure to check back to see what randomness we encounter tomorrow :) Until then... Laters.