Well we arrived safe and sound at South Bend today after 2 days of driving with a 9 month old. Yesterday we drove for approximately 6-7 hours and my daughter was in her car seat for much of that time. She did well most of the time but it broke our hearts. She could not crawl or play all day because there was no where clean enough for us to put her down to crawl.

One of the most intriguing parts of the ride for me is western Maryland. It is so removed from the Baltimore-DC-Southern MD community that I wonder if it feels closer to West Virginia than MD. The air was cooler up there and the corn crop was nice and green, so I guess they are not suffering from the drought that's killing the central and southern MD farmer's crops. We got on the 70, so we weren't able to go as far as Cumberland, we instead went north at Hagerstown. However, I would really like to explore that part of the state. I think that, like Southern Maryland, it has a lot of history. Last year, on our way back, we stopped at a town and the streets were made of cobblestone and houses from the 18th or 19th century. It was really neat. I can't remember if it was Hagerstown.

The PA part of the trip was uneventful. Everytime I drive through PA, there's always roadwork going on! My wife was dissappointed that Ohio did not have a welcome center. I don't want to say that they don't welcome guests to their state but we really wanted to feel welcomed and loved . . .yeah, right! We spent the night in Streetsboro, which is 30 minutes east of Cleveland.

I watched MNF and we let our little girl crawl around the room like a mad sailor to make up for all the time couped up in the car. We finally arrived in Southbend early in the afternoon. Fortunately, the little one slept for about 2 1/2 hours because she was up early in the morning. She just about lost it for the last 30 minutes of the trip.

Tomorrow, I'll be taking the train into Chicago for the National Black Catholic Congress. Because I'll be working, I won't get to see the town, but that's nothing new. I was in Montreal and Toronto, earlier this year for work and did not even venture out of the hotel. Maybe someday I'll actually get to see Chicago.