Road Trip Filler, Part the Third

Headed out of Terre Haute in the morning of our third day and into a thick, pervasive fog. The mood was better than the weather, as my kid rolled out a dope alt-rock-country Spotify mix of her own making for the morning. 

Indiana's roads were less than excellent, and our little Hyundai Elantra bucked and bounced over I-70's pitted pavement. Not far from the Ohio border, we started seeing billboards for Uranus Fudge Factory. The first read "The Best Fudge Comes From Uranus". It got better, or at least sillier, from there. We managed to capture this billboard:

I encourage you to peruse the website linked above, which includes headings like 'Everything You Need is In Uranus', 'Fudge Packer Favorites', 'We Love to Pack Your Fudge', and 'A Taste of Uranus' among many, many other similarly juvenile and delicious marketeering wordplay. The red states may be going full Handmaid's Tale, but they seem to enjoy puns, so, cool?

Once we got into Ohio, the roads got so much smoother, almost as if government prioritizing certain public accommodations can actually impact things in a positive way. You're not here to listen to an aging liberal whine. Bygones.

Things progressed without incident until we left the Greater Columbus environs. About an hour outside Ohio's capital, I glanced in my rearview and saw a hurlyburly of police lights rapidly gaining on me. I slid into the right lane and watched a late model pickup truck blast past me followed by five police vehicles. 

The chase continued for the better part of an hour. Every so often, the road would straighten and we could see the procession off in the distance, the twinkling lights on the cruisers gathering strengths as several other cars joined the party. On a couple of occasions, police vehicles would drop back from the chase and try to slow the traffic on the highway down. At another point, we saw an officer with a spike strip fail to deploy it in time, looking forlornly down the highway as his missed opportunity sped down the road.

Finally, we came around a bend and saw the police caravan stopped by the side of the road, many guns drawn, and officers deployed in tactical positions with weapons pointed down from the highway into a ravine, long guns braced on the guardrail. You can see a little of it in the video linked here, because I can't figure out how to embed it, with our (my) excited commentary. Here's a still:

Friends, that's the craziest thing I've ever seen on a highway, and I've watched FOG:TB DDS Laster try to drive a car. My kid didn't think it was all that interesting, but she's an idiot.

That idiot drove us the final four hours home, which let me watch some golf and text with some Gheorghies, so she's not all bad.

Made it home in 10 hours flat with some inefficient stops. As always, any experiences beyond the time spent with my increasingly open kid are a bonus. That we got fudge puns and cops on parade was more than I could've expected.

[UPDATE: The pickup was stolen and full of drugs! Much excite.]