Res Ipsa Loquitur: Road Trip Day One

Starting Location: Alexandria, Virginia Number of States: 5 Number of Stops: 2 Ending Location: Binghamton, New York Total Miles Traveled: (Will be filled in shortly.)

So today started in Alexandria, Virginia. We packed up the car and were on our way to Philadelphia via Maryland and Delaware.

Stop Number One Philadelphia:

We had four main stops and one mission while in the "City of Brotherly Love." Our stops were at Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, Constitution Plaza, and the Museum of Art (a.k.a. the Rocky Steps).

We had a great time walking around town - but we still had our mission to accomplish.

MISSION NUMBER 1:

Our first mission of the day was to find the best Philly Cheese Steak. So we started an informal survey of people from Philly to s see where they went to go to get their cheese steaks. The clear winner of our informal survey was Jim's.

Jim's was good, but we needed to compare, so we then went to Geno's, and later in the day Tony Luke's.

So after the comparison, we decided the winner was Tony Luke's, but just had to remember to tell them we wanted "wit" - e.g., with onions and "well" - e.g., the onions could well. But the other advantage to Tony Luke's was that it also had comfy booths and a bar! Sue was our waitress there and she was fabulous.

We ended up leaving Philadelphia around 6:45 on our way to Scranton, PA.

Scranton, PA: MISSION NUMBER 2:

This mission was inspired by a Harry Chapin song - John and Jen are huge fans, which is why we had to listen to the JLV compilation of Harry Chapin from Philadelphia to Scranton.

So the mission was to explore the local where a truck with 30,000 pounds of bananas lost control and skid down the hill into Scranton. As it turned out before we made it to Scranton we ran into Bob at the local truck stop, who knew all about the song, the history, and the hill where the tragic accident occurred.