June 22 – 24: Driving Trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia

With airfare being unfortunately high due to all the summer vacations happening right now, I didn’t expect to go very far this weekend. Wednesday night I get a text message from my parents. “We’re free for a trip this weekend. Any cheap flights?”

I navigate to Google Flights. Only a few flights below $300, and unless I wanted to spend only 10PM Saturday to 5AM Sunday at my destination, the pricetag was going to be even higher. I respond to the text “No deals. Nothing til late August.”

I put down my phone expecting that to be the end of it, but my phone buzzes again. “How about a driving trip? We’ll help drive some of the way.”

Memorial Day weekend when I completed my 2400 mile journey around the midwest, I had assumed that was the last driving trip of the year for me. I pulled up a map of the US. To the west, Colorado / Wyoming were the closest states, but flights to Denver are cheap enough that it would seem like a waste. To the east, Pennsylvania didn’t look that far. I had originally planned to fly into Pittsburgh for a weekend, but a driving trip just might work.

I responded back to my parents with the idea and got an enthusiastic reply. We would hit the road Friday after work, not stopping until just outside of Pittsburgh. Saturday we’d solve escape rooms in Pennsylvania and nearby West Virginia, then turn around and head home.

I’m becoming more and more accustomed to long drives. At the start of the year, my weekend trip to the Detroit area felt like a wild idea, and here I passed through Detroit and Toledo at about the halfway point of the drive. The weekend was a blast. Over the course of the weekend, I solved escape rooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio and even got to do a little sightseeing. The two new states brings me up to a total of 33 completed. Only 17 more to go!