Left to fly to Pittsburgh today (long story short: somehow it's cheaper to rent a car for a week if you return it to the same airport, this airport is closer to West Virginia where we leave from), sigh. We are going to visit another cousin, Marianne, in Maryland for a day and hit Washington D.C. before going to West Virginia.
I am grateful to Bill for looking up reviews of our airport terminal (different from the one we came in-flying Jet Blue instead of Delta) and finding out that all the restaurants and stores are BEFORE you go through security, rather than after like every other airport I've seen where it's the other way around. So Mom and I got breakfast as she insisted on doing, and I hit the bookstore, and then we did checkthrough. We were going through a tiny end of the terminal rather than the main area, so it was the shortest security check ever. Yes!

As for Jet Blue:
(a) no free magazine
(b) free water bottles to keep (to Mom's delight) and chips/soda, because according to the flight card in the pocket, we deserve free food
(c) free TV-movies are charged.
(d) o quote the flight card, �Gone are the days of snoozing on a previously snoozed-on pillow. Purchase a pillow or blanket that's yours and only yours.� Pillow $6, blanket $5. I can see the marketing department trying to look on the bright side of this, but who was complaining about a �previously snoozed-on� pillow before? Other than germophobes? Just wondering.

The plane flight was fine-left pretty late but was still almost on time, so that was ok. Then we got the rental car and hit the road. Mom had printed out a Triptik from AAA for the directions. And for the first few hours, that was fine. Made it all the way through the Pennsylvania Turnpike without issues. Found the Lincoln Highway after that without issues.

AND THEN...
According to the Triptik, we were to be on the Lincoln highway for 14 miles, then turn left at �PA-1004� and eventually hit �PA-16.� But dear god, WE NEVER EVER EVEN SAW A PLACE TO TURN LEFT, EVER. Lincoln Highway 30 GOES ON FOR FOR FUCKING EVER. Tricia had said to us earlier that when he moved to Massachusetts, it was the first time she ever got lost, and you couldn't just get off the freeway and turn around and go back in the other direction. Boy, was that the problem here except more so. Once you are on Lincoln, there is nowhere else to go for a long time!

Why is it that whenever I have printed instructions to drive somewhere, there's almost always a point where something goes wrong on the printed page and I have to restart the GPS? Or sometimes it even happens the other way around? Why is that?

So the GPS said to keep going on Lincoln Highway until Gettysburg....To be fair, we saw some fun stuff on the side of the road, like a tiki place, an outdoor sculpture place (gargoyles, dinosaurs, yeti...), a place called �Criminal Tattooing,� one called Elite Tattooing, and Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Chocolate Covered Bacon. (�Hey, if we come back this way, can we go there?�) And we saw a hay roll propped up on a pedestal with a happy face on it.

I will say that driving through Gettysburg is very cute though--I would not have minded stopping there were it not 6 p.m. and we still had an hour more to go. Great old buildings and houses, the fields, looked like the shops and museums were cute. Reminded me of Boston/Winchester/Cambridge area again, as we had wandered out of Super Cute Old House Region for awhile there.

Oh yeah, and WE GOT TO LEAVE THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY FINALLY.

We finally got to Marianne's around 7. She has a really huge nice house. Also met her husband Pat and (briefly) her daughter Megan, who was super snarky to her parents and I enjoyed that. She's gone for the rest of the (all too brief) time we're here, which is a shame since she seems fun. (But if I were her I would have made other plans too, because who the hell are we?) We had pizza and chatted and had fun. Marianne is indeed like Mom-very chatty and funny and laid back. (Again, WISH I WAS HERE LONGER instead of spending an entire week in West Virginia.) We plotted out where to go in DC-Capital tour and hit Smithsonian museums. Alas, she went to start this by leaving here at 7 a.m. because it'll take at least an hour and a half to get there. Uck.

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