Born to Run….towards Denny’s

We departed the Windy City just in time to miss the 99-degree weather and departed for our drive through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. As my friend Caroline who is from Indiana noted, “it is difficult to not fall asleep” during the drive. They weren’t the most interesting states and didn’t offer the high volume of “Adult XXX Superstore” and “Jesus Christ Is Your Savior not a Swearword” billboards that we had grown accustomed to seeing on our trip. However, these states offered a plethora of “Fireworks” billboards advertising everything from a sparkler to a nuclear bomb, clarifying why so many people still die during Fourth of July every year. God bless America.

We arrived in Cleveland, which was a surprising highlight. The city is large, clean, and right on Lake Erie, giving it some extraordinary waterside vistas. Pulling into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, we realized that the featured exhibition was actually on Bruce Springsteen, causing Jen and BB to leap with New Jersey fever, fasten on their acrylic nails and sprint towards the “Asbury Park” sign. We wandered through the museum, admiring what could be most readily compared to the largest collection of Hard Rock Café memorabilia in America. Learnings: Mick Jagger is TINY and Bruce Springsteen’s jeans were REALLY tight on the cover of Born in the USA.

Off to Pennsylvania in search of another piece of meat impossible to fit in Jennie’s purse, the 15 pound burger at (whodathunkit?) Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub in bustling Clearfield, Pennsylvania. (Note that this is the second Denny’s we’ve visited during the trip). Denny’s currently holds the world record for biggest burger in the USA, a 100 pounder but we were simply in search of a gigantic piece of meat for our road trip’s last evening. We found ‘em! After 3 gigantic burgers and enjoying the company of our neighboring patrons (all truckers), we headed back to get our final night’s rest.