Roadtrippin' to California: Day 1

I'm not even gonna start out being all, "whoa it's been a while" cause...well, duh. It's pretty obvious.
So just look at the date of my last blog, be in shock at how long it's been, and there ya go, we're all caught up.

Ryan and I left Philadelphia this afternoon to start making our way to our new home in California. It was surprisingly bitter-sweet. MANY tears were cried last night, but that was only because I nanny (well, nannied...so sad to say that) the most wonderful child on the planet and I had to say goodbye to that family yesterday. I literally walked in the door to our empty apartment, ran to the bathroom and sobbed. I am going to miss that boy so so much. Thankfully we had a wonderful last day together, and his parents planned a little goodbye party for all of us. It was a very, "don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened" type of deal, which is totally not my normal tune. But I was all for anything that would make the goodbyes easier. Especially when it involves a 2 year old proposing a toast with sparkling apple cider. "To all of us! Cheers!"

But after that goodbye, it was about 85% sweet and 15% not-quite-bitter-but-something-a-little-less-harsh. We were both sad to leave our apartment. We had a great place there and we'll miss it and look back at it fondly. But leaving the city? Leaving Filthadelphia? The City of Brotherly Shove? Where trashcans are optional and the sidewalk is an acceptable stand-in for a toilet? That was nice. That felt good. SEE YA PHILLY! It was a strange feeling, looking at all the skyscrapers and being like, "I lived there. This is all familiar to me." I guess change is always kind of strange. But in this case, is so so good.

So today our final destination was Pittsburgh.
Our first stop was to walk part of the abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike. I got wrong directions from practically the only website that gives you detailed directions on how to get there. So we ended up driving 10 miles east, when we should have been going west. Ugh. It's not really a big deal because Ryan and I get lost EVERYWHERE, so we're used it by now. But it was especially sucky, because it wasn't our fault this time. But we eventually made our way there.
[Don't you worry though, I already emailed the website creator and told him he needs to fix that typo. It's a rather important one.]

We got to walk in some snow!! Haven't done that since February 2011!

One of us especially loved the walk on the abandoned turnpike

Next was the World's Largest Coffee Pot. Unfortunately, we left the city an hour later than we wanted to and then getting lost added quite a bit of time to our journey, so by this time it was dark out. But we still saw it. And really liked it.

And our last stop, Gravity Hill!! I've never been to one of these before, but I've always wanted to go. It's where you stop at the bottom of a hill, put your car in neutral and then roll up-hill. It was pretty cool. We actually got up to 10mph rolling up that little hill. Crazy crazy.

Ahhh, so looking forward to seeing the rest of this crazy country! Stay tuned for a couple more updates from the road!