I woke up well before Kyle and took that opportunity to go to the cafe at the rest area. I paid $7 for a croissant and a hot chocolate, and both were very disappointing. The croissant had a texture a little bit like plastic, and the hot chocolate was water-based and tasted way too watery for my liking. But, the internet was better inside the cafe and so I was able to get some stuff done while I waited for Kyle.
After about an hour and a half I decided it was time to wake up Kyle, so I went and did just that. He got up pretty quickly and we were able to leave by around 11am. It wasn’t very far to Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, and we got there within about an hour. We found on street metered parking right by the side of the capitol building, but we’d run out of quarters after all our laundry visits and other parking meters. I got out of the car to take a look at the other meters, and found one that had 36 minutes left on it! I also saw a car with a parking ticket on it, oops.
We got out and walked to the front, freezing as we did because of the wind. I still had my shorts on, so the cold was biting at my legs. We made it quick, even though it was one of the nicest capitol buildings I’ve been to so far, with a really nice golden dome on top. Definitely one of the top 3 along with Kentucky and California. We then headed back to the car and got back on the road to our next destination: Planet Fitness.
We wanted to shower since we hadn’t in a few days, but we also wanted to give the treadmills another go. We set our goal as a mile, which sounded reasonable and achievable. Well, turns out we’re not in great shape. I was out of it by the time I was done the mile, and we both did our mile in 10 minutes. Kyle says that’s good, but it doesn’t feel good to me, I don’t know why. The shower after was really nice though because they were rain showers with good pressure, and they even had the side jet things that spray water from the walls. Mine was cold, unfortunately, but Kyle said his was warm, which I’m a bit jealous of.
Afterward, we drove to Columbus, Ohio, which is much much bigger than Charleston. The drive was a lot less interesting as we were leaving the mountains and returning to the plains of the north east. It was a lot colder, and still windy, and I was still wearing my shorts. The capitol building wasn’t very interesting, and in stark contrast to West Virginia’s capitol, was actually one of the most boring ones so far. We only stayed about 10 minutes, and as we were walking back to the car someone walked past and said “Aren’t you cold?” to which I replied “Very!”.
We carried on towards Kentucky, but stopped part way to do some DoorDash. Deer are a big issue here, and we had to be very careful on the side roads, and had a few close calls along the way. We did DoorDash in Frankfort, Kentucky for a few hours, which is actually the capital of Kentucky, but it was too late to go see the capitol. Afterward, we drove to a rest area only 15 minutes out of town and turned in for the night.
The skyline of Cincinnati