Day 1 - all great plans of mice and Divas

Today, October 4, 2014 was the first day of our Honeymoon. We intend to drive through New England for the fall colors, stopping in several key places to tick off items on our bucket lists while also recovering from the hectic year we have had thus far. The day started off just fine, we even left the house only 10 minutes late, which in Girl Trip time is an hour and a half early.

I did try a selfie. I'm not really good at it yet. Probably should have considered not going to bed with wet hair if I planned on a selfie. But, honestly, who plans a selfie any way, Right?

That's me in the right and Mrs. CaDiva on the left.

So off to Starbucks and DD for our initial nourishment. And we are on the road. Eastbound on 80 only an hour and 5 minutes after we left the house.

They predicted rain, temp in the 30s with windchill in the 20s. Well, it is Iowa, what should we expect? But they were wrong. It didn't rain. It was sunny, cold and windy.

We drove out, rehashing all the things we should have done differently at the wedding and reminding ourselves to JUST LET IT GO!

We decided to stop for breakfast at our favorite little place just outside of Coralville Iowa. The Colony Village Inn. This is where CaDiva discovered she loved strawberry rhubarb anything. Today it was actually raspberry rhubarb on an english muffin.  She is so adaptable.

We were surprised to see the Ox Yoke Inn was gone...and I do mean GONE.

 

But, as long as the Colony Village Inn was still there, after 45 years apparently, we were happy. And still the sun shone. Another hour and we were crossing the mighty Mississippi into Illinois.  While I was off looking for a great shot with my new digital Nikon...in case you haven't guessed, I got a new camera as a wedding present (Thank you BIL, NIL, and her family.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, while I was scoping out a good shot of the great mother herself, CaDiva made her first new friend at the Illinois Welcome Center.

He broke the news to us that there was a little football game going on between Stanford and Notre Dame and we would need to go well past Michigan City to find a room. He did recommend Indiana Dunes State Park to visit Lake Michigan. And I'm certain he would have been just as right about that as he was the lodging situation. But, unfortunately, I lost track of his advice and we ended up in Ohio without visiting the great lake. We did get our picture taken with Regal the Eagle though...did I mention the new camera?

I tried to crop the picture, but I'm still learning the ins and outs of this new toy. So, until I can fix it, just pretend you can't see us below the busts. Well we continued across Illinois onto the Indiana Turnpike. Passed all the rabid football fans. Well, we didn't exactly drive past them. They may have been out there, but it wasn't like it was the Cyclones at the Hawks. They aren't terribly showy, I guess. Anyway, CaDiva's new friend's guess that we could get a room in Angola (wasn't there a war or something there?) was a little off. We needed to go another hundred miles until almost Toledo to find a room. That wouldn't have been too bad. Except that rain they promised found us ... in buckets ... in the dark (an hour earlier here now that we were in Indiana remember) and in construction. 

But we made it, and I had time to figure out how to download and post some long overdue items to the blog. Here is hoping I can be good and do this after each of our upcoming adventures. Lake Erie and Niagara tomorrow.