Week 5: Indianapolis to Pittsburgh! 
Monday morning, we couldn't wait to get down to the Indianapolis Speedway. Local news guy Dick Wolfsie had tipped us off that we could take a spin around the nearly hundred-year-old track. It's a slow drive, stopping to point out the golf course in the infield, the new Pagoda at the grandstands, and of course, the strip of bricks from the original track that marks the start and finish of each race. The boys kept asking the driver to speed up, but he explained that the pitch of the track would make that unsafe in the shuttle bus! 
The best part, though, was that by chance we were on the tour with two couples from our KOA and they invited us to come over to their campground that evening to roast marshmallows with them! One of the couples are rving full-time, and they have a website where he posts entries about their travels across the country. After the track tour, we went inside to the Speedway's museum where you can see stunning and sometimes strange examples of automotive history. They even have an old Harley Davidson motorcycle!
 Indianapolis is a great city, with lots going on downtown. We went out for a famous pork tenderloin sandwich at the Red Eye Cafe (of Late Night with David Letterman fame). Then took walk through the downtown shops and skywalks, including the Artsgarden. The spectacular seven story glass dome that spans across a downtown intesection was hosting an exhibit of ultra-cool dog and cat houses!
Throughout downtown you could spot pieces from the public art exhibit Signs by Julian Opie. A woman swims across a skywalk, and a digital man and woman perpetually walk down a sidewalk. Publics parks and monuments abound, and a series of canals complete with gondolas winds in between hotels.
From Indianapolis we headed east toward Pittsburgh. October is, without a doubt, the best month to be traveling through Ohio and Pennsylvania. The scenery is SPECTACULAR, with the rolling hills painted every shade of orange, yellow and red. 
We stopped for one night at the Buckeye Lake KOA and wished we could have stayed longer. A beautiful campground with a great mini-golf course and a big gameroom,it was hard to get the kids to leave in the morning. And Nick didn't even get a chance to see the size of the lake just across the road. If he would have got to fishing on that lake, we would have missed the game in Pittsburgh for sure!
The next day we took a little side trip to visit The Homestead in Dresden, Ohio, the headquarters for the Longaberger Basket company. Luckily, we didn't have too much time to spend there, because I think I could have dropped a ton of cash in those shops!
But we had to roll on, because we had a date with our favorite firefighters from New York! We were meeting them in State College to tailgate at the Penn State game, and we could almost taste their grilled breakfast sandwiches already!
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