The drive to Columbus was pretty short (brief respite from our long day yesterday). Once we got there we had some trouble getting parking. Katie tells me parking is always difficult in a city, which makes total sense. I've very rarely actually driven to a city though, so I don't have a ton of experience looking for spots in one. Anyways, we eventually found a lot you had to pay for. The problem was it cost $3 and only accepted quarters. I currently don't have any cash with me at all (although I know I need to change this fairly soon), but really - who has that many quarters? We certainly didn't. So we took a little trip to Subway to attempt to get quarters. Fortunately there was a woman there who was (loudly) telling the cashier she had just done laundry and had a ton of quarters. So we hopped out of line and asked her if we could exchange some money (Katie was far more prepared than I was and actually had cash). After that we secured our spot and started walking around the city.
We didn't have very much time to spare (since we had another long day of driving), but we planned on walking around a bit and getting lunch. After meandering about for awhile looking for somewhere to eat we settled on Tim Horton's. We were originally looking for a Crazy Chicken (a food place I've heard of but never been to), but it ended up being too far away and we had to skip it. Oh well.
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| Breakfast |
Katie is trying to get post cards of all the cities we go to, so we started looking for a place that might sell one. Columbus takes the "no work on Sundays" pretty seriously it seems. We were there just after noon and most places were still closed. The whole city was fairly quiet. It seemed nice, but I wish I could have seen it on a "normal" day - I'd have a better feel for how the city really is. Anyways, we ended up not being able to find a post card, but we had a nice meander around a couple of blocks, so I didn't mind. Actually, I quite enjoyed it. I thought the architecture was pretty interesting. Each building was a little different, but none of them were so "out there" that they looked weird together. I liked it a lot. After a quick look into the Ohio State House (which had absolutely no security checks, but a pretty cool interior) we headed off to our next destination - Decatur, IL.
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| Cool building - no idea what it is |
You might be wondering why on earth we decided to go there (a town which most people have never heard of). One of my friends (Caitlin) from high school went to college at Millikin University, which is in Decatur. She graduated today (unfortunately I missed the actual graduation), and I wanted to see her school before she left and see her before I left.
The drive out was mostly uneventful. I took some photos while Katie was driving. We listened to some music. We switched off driving. Got some gas (Katie managed to track down some post cards at the gas station, so that was successful). Drove some more. Took more photos. Organized my CD binder (no joke, this is just so me, right?). Hit some rain. Drove some more. Nothing bad, but not really amazingly noteworthy. One thing I did like as we drove along were these fields of yellow flowers. They seem to come up in corn fields after the corn had been cut down, and they're just really happy. I took some photos of them as Katie was driving. Finally we got to Decatur, parked, stretched and walked around a bit.
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| Field with the yellow flowers This photo was taken from the car and I'm really proud I got the horse in it too! |
It was nice to see Caitlin's school since I've heard quite a few stories about it. But it was really great to see her before I headed out (although she said she'd come visit me, and I'm planning on holding her to that). She gave us a tour of the school, including a stop on the roof of her science building. (I especially enjoyed this because I never went on the roof of the science building at UMW, so I felt like I was sort of making up for it now.)
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| Caitlin and me with the Big Bronze Man at Millikin |
Then we had a quick tour of her house which they think was built sometime in the early 1900s and so is architecturally neat. Finally we headed out for dinner at Mi Pueblo (kind of like their version of Fredericksburg's Capital Ale House). We did a bit of puttering around back at Caitlin's house (checking email and stuff), including a 20 min yoga session hosted by Katie's laptop (stretching felt SO good after all the sitting from driving). Then we collapsed into bed (or onto pillows to be more honest) and fell asleep watching part of Someone Like You (I have no idea how it ends, but Katie's seen it before and apparently the girl gets together with Hugh Jackman - shocking, I know).
Day's Map
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