I woke up a little late, around 9 or so and took a shower. Once I was all ready to go, I headed out onto the road towards Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg was originally going to be part of Jackson and I’s trip, but I ended up going now since it’s a little bit out of the way for us, and I was passing nearby it now anyway. Going now would save us time later and allow us to spend more time exploring cities like New York, Boston, and Portland.
I was able to find paid street parking nearby, only about a 5 minute walk from the front of the capitol building. The meter was a little odd though, it had a sticker on it saying “If the license plate is entered incorrectly, the ticket issued will be valid”. It definitely wasn’t just faded with the “in” at the start being gone, it was written that way from the start. Is it a typo? Who knows, but it seems weird that an invalid plate would still issue a valid ticket, since that’s how they look it up on their system (it’s not a pay-and-display system).
I walked the short walk to the capitol building, and took my first capitol photo in a while. It felt a little weird, I’m not going to lie, especially since I had to do a selfie because there wasn’t really anyone around I wanted to ask to take a photo of me. The capitol grounds were quite nice though with lots of gardens and trees, along with some plazas you could walk around. I didn’t spend very long there since it was raining a little bit, and I wanted to get as close to Virginia Beach as I could tonight so I could arrive early ish the next day.
I got back to the car and got on the road towards a rest area about 45 minutes away from Virginia Beach. I stopped about 10 minutes before to get a pizza from Domino’s, at which I paid $25 for a pizza only to go inside to pay and only be charged $15, nice! It did take about 30 minutes longer than estimated, but they were busy so I can excuse that, especially because I got a $10 discount for some reason that I decided not to question.
I then drove to the rest area nearby, but as I approached I saw a sign saying it was closing at 6:30 which was in 15 minutes! That’s no good, so I kept going and turned around at the next interchange and went to the eastbound rest area instead, which was going to be open all night. I parked and started eating my pizza while watching some YouTube videos. I ended up eating way too much pizza and really didn’t feel well, so I went to bed relatively early.
At around 3am I woke up from a dream in which I was about to use the bathroom, which is a weird thing to dream about. Upon waking up, I realized I really needed to pee and that my dream was probably a way of my body waking me up so I can go use the bathroom. I obliged and went to use the rest area bathroom, bringing my water bottle with me to fill up at the same time since I was also really thirsty. Unfortunately, the sink in the bathroom only dispensed hot water, and the water filling station outside was out of order! I went back to the car and tried to fall asleep again, but struggled because of how thirsty I was. I eventually fell asleep though and slept through the rest of the night.