Halfway Across the Country and Back

            For months, we have had a trip to Iowa on our calendar for this past long weekend, so that we could go to Mya’s friend’s engagement party. Mya said that we were going to drive there, and to be honest that sounded like a lot. It is a 15-hour drive, and the initial plan was to drive all 15 hours in one day. Obviously, this is possible, especially with two people, but it sounds awful frankly. So when we started to look at booking hotels, I suggested that we stop in Chicago on the way there and on the way back. Chicago is still an 11 hour drive, but then a small drive to get to Iowa, when we were booking that, the rate for Sunday in Chicago was wildly inflated compared to Friday, which I later realized was because the Chicago Marathon was that day, so we decided to stop in South Bend instead, which was closer to half-way.

            So the first day of travel to Chicago started early. We had a dinner reservation at 4:45 to get some Chicago style pizza, so we started our journey before six. The first part of the drive was smooth. I would say the area with the biggest problem was Indiana. It felt like they had construction across the entire state. They would go down to one lane, and then there would be a reprieve for like a couple of miles, and then there would be construction again, and the people just were not moving through it quickly.

            Of course, as we got closer to Chicago on a Friday afternoon, the traffic worsened. Thankfully it never got too bad, but driving like that in a new busy city is stressful, and the people in Chicago do not play around. I was going ten over the speed limit on a crowded interstate, and there were still cars flying past me.

            Thankfully we made it to Pequod’s an hour before our reservation. We took a quick walk, because there was a bridge with a view of the skyline, and there was also a bar/salon with a dog mural on the side of it that I wanted to take a picture of. Then we went to Pequod’s, and even though we still had 45 minutes until our reservation, they sat us anyways.

            The pizza, which we went out of our way to stop for, was good, not great. It also did not seem totally Chicago style like Lou Malnati’s. This seemed closer to a deep-dish pizza. The crust was super thick, and it was fluffy and tasty, but it felt like it needed way more sauce to counteract the amount of crust that was on the bottom like a traditional Chicago style pizza. We also had it with peppers on it, and that was a good addition, but it was not the best pizza that I had on the trip.

            Once we got to the hotel, I was surprisingly still hungry, even after eating over half of the pizza, so I online ordered from Portillo’s, and I got a Chicago Beef sandwich dipped and a cake shake. I figured when in Chicago, one must eat the staple foods, and this was the right choice, and so was the addition of the spicy peppers. Although my stomach disagreed that decision the next morning when I went on my one-mile run. I preferred the beef sandwich to the pizza.

            The drive to Iowa the next morning went super quick. It helped that we left early again, so that Mya had the chance to spend more time with her friend, so the roads were pretty empty. Thankfully the speed limit out there is typically 70 too. It is not as flat as people say though. The hills are almost constantly rolling, and some are sizable, but no mountains. The scenery changed as well. There was an increase in fields, instead of trees, but many of them were brown, even the corn stalks looked brown.

            We got to Cami’s around 10:30, so we ended up spending over 24 hours in Iowa. After hanging out at her house, we went to the engagement party, which was followed up by a trip a downtown to continue the party, so Mya got to spend a good amount of time with Cami.

            A couple weeks before we left on our trip, Dave Portney was in Des Moines doing pizza reviews, and there was a place that looked delicious. So we told Cami we wanted to go there. Of course, we did not look at their hours until Sunday morning when we were going to go, and they were closed until Tuesday. So instead, we went to a place called Grimaldi’s which is a limited chain, but they started in Brooklyn, and they even have a restaurant in the UAE. How they ended up in Des Moines, I am not sure, but I am glad they did.

            Their pizza was made in a coal fired oven, and they had a thin crisp crust. Their cheese was used sparingly, and the sauce was the star of the show. We split an 18 inch between four of us, and after Mya and I ate our share of the pizza we were still hungry, and we thought about getting another pizza to go, but ultimately decided against it, and instead we went across the parking lot to Hurts Donut.

They had a massive variety of delicious looking donuts. We ended up picking out a half dozen, four of which I ate, three of which were great. Of the four, my favorite was the brownie, which was based off the Little Debby cosmic brownie, and it was a chocolate cake donut with the rainbow big sprinkles just like dessert I loved as a child. Next best was the Homer, a fluffy donut with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles, and coming in a close third was the most artistic donut of the bunch, an Oreo cheesecake donut. This one was also fluffy with Oreo and Grahm cracker crumbles on top, and a cream cheese like filling on the inside. My fourth donut was Bavarian cream. It was a fluffy donut, but it did not taste nearly as sweet as the others, almost like it was a whole wheat donut, and the cream inside was not the best. It is the only one of the bunch where I would say that the Dunkin’ version would be better.

After that, we started our trip to South Bend, but an hour out from South Bend, I wanted to make a stop. On our way to Chicago, I saw a sign for the Indiana Dunes National Park, and I had Mya look it up, and it was only 10 minutes away from the exit. So on the way back, we tried to go see the dunes. This turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected. I thought we would just pull up and see the sunset and some massive dunes and head on our way, but instead the first spot it took us to was closed.

So I tried a different spot that was ten minutes further down the road, and when we got there, we had just missed sunset, and we only saw a beach. I tried to see if there was a massive dune nearby on the map, but with no luck. The remnants of the sunset were beautiful though, and we could see two cities out across the great lake, and we finally got some good pictures together that were not just selfies.

We finished the hour drive to the hotel, and it was by far the nicest hotel of the three, and it was the biggest room. Oddly enough, it was the cheapest hotel. Once settled, we ordered Panda Express from UberEats for a late dinner, and that was a mistake, we should have just stopped when we drove past, because it took forever for someone to go and get the food to bring it, because clearly everything is already made at Panda Express, it is not like they had to specially cook our order. I never use UberEats, and this just confirms that it is always better to get it yourself.

Our final drive home was a little longer than expected. Closer to nine hours than 8. It went well. There was the Indiana construction again, but the traffic flow was smoother. One big issue though is the cost to drive. I spent over $75 on tolls to go to and from Iowa, which blows my mind. Sense when did it start to cost money to drive? And that is like real money, not just a few dollars here and there. Overall, the drive was not as bad as I thought it would be, but my butt hurts from all of the sitting, and I will be glad to be home in less than 2 hours to watch the Bills game. (They lost.)