Football Road Trip 4.0

October 28th - 30th

I am sure I say this for this post each year, but I love this weekend. It is so much fun! This year it is coming at a great time of the year. We will get to drive through the fall leaves, it is right in the middle of the season so it is a nice break to get away and as silly as it sounds, it will be so fun to watch stress-free football together.

This year we were able to head out earlier and took Friday off work. We started with a new local donut place, Route 8 Donuts, and hopped on to the interstate to head north.

We found lots of random, fun stops along the way. Our first was lunch in Athens, OH where Ohio University is. We spent some time walking around the small downtown and grabbed lunch at O'Betty's Red Hots. This place was quirky and really neat.

Lil Hokiebird  met Rufus the Bobcat

We were on the road a while before we found a billboard that made us make our next pit stop at Coons Candy in Harpster, OH. We expected this to be a pretty quick trip but we ended up talked to the owner and his wife about traveling for a really long time. So long that I had to take a selfie with our new friends.

Our next pit stop, was in downtown, Toledo, OH. We had seen pictures and heard about this mural and it was finally time for us to see it for ourselves. One of my favorite things about art like this is the detail. All the random, fun, silly things you can find in a picture if you take the time to look.

Now that we were far enough along on our trip, it was time to start looking up or random high school football game we were going to catch. We had a friend that recommended an area he had grown up in and it just so happened that a red shirt freshman at Tech was the quarterback there the year before so it seemed the perfect place to catch a game. But first, we rushed to check out one more random roadside stop before it was too dark.

We quickly made our way to Brighton, MI to "dine with Jesus" just as it was getting dark. we didn't get long here as it was getting dark and there was a game we wanted to get to, but this was a really neat stop and I am glad we made to trip.

The football game was at Saline High School and it was a pretty impressive set up. The school was crazy big and the stadium even had a small video board kind of display. We had a great time watching so high school football and listening to all the local talk for adults and students.

We finished our evening grabbing a pizza for the road at Anthony's Gourmet Pizza.

The next morning we headed into East Lansing, Michigan to watch the Michigan vs Michigan State game in Spartan Stadium. We made it to East Lansing in time to explore campus before heading into the game. We were able to find Sparty all over campus for Lil Hokiebird to meet.

We were also able to make it over to the Magic Johnson statue to get a few pictures before the game. Unfortunately, there was a lot of construction going on around him to we couldn't get too close.

Found the cheerleaders on the way!

Once we got into the game, we made a lot of Michigan State friends. One even gave Jed her "hat" since he wasn't wearing any green or white.

Michigan State lost 32-23 but it was a great experience and we really enjoyed the campus, stadium and fans.

On our way out we had to get a few quick pictures around the beautiful campus, get some ice cream from the MSU Dairy Store and become addicted to the crack fries at Hop Cat.

After all that, it was time to hit the road and make it as far as we could that night before our next game Sunday afternoon.

Sunday morning we headed to Indianapolis. It wasn't a Castro road trip without at least one random stop on our way. Like this random stop for a big rooster in Warren, IN.

And who can resist the Nesquik Bunny!

We made it to Lucas Oil Stadium in time to get parked, walk around the stadium and head into the game.

Thanks to Jay we had great seats! We had so much fun at the game but bummed they lost to the Chiefs 30-14.

Former Hokie Dadi Nicholas (#52)

The last leg of the trip is always the worst. We are always sad that the weekend is over but so glad we got to make the trip. We are already looking forward to which games we will be able to go to next year.