Day #29- Mary Had a Little Lamb

We are in Maryland.  The song has nothing to do with anything other than yet another look into my weird brain.  Mary-Lamb, Mary-Land?  Ok, I'll stop. 
Anyway, here we are in Maryland.  Did we plan to stop here?  Nope.  Do things tend to work out the opposite of what we want?  Yes.  The traffic on this side of the country is far from being a lamb.  It is a beast.  First, the tolls.  Oh, those damn tolls!  Unlike the ticket drama in Pennsylvania, we didn't just get a ticket when we entered and pay when we exited.  No, these tolls were stops every few miles.  None were consistent.  One would be 75¢ while the next was $2.19 and the next $4.  None of this was reported in advance, so it was a surprise at each toll booth.  There was no flying thru the Easy Pass lane as those had gates down that would only open once the pass was read.  The pay lanes were cash only.  Yep, no cards allowed.  So, no cash?  You're screwed.  There were 10 booths at each stop, but only 2 open.  Each line was about 20 cars deep.  This is no exaggeration...we had driven 4 hours and the GPS said we had only gone 2 hours towards our destination.  We had been using our Roulette winnings, but that ran out.  We had to stop at a gas station to get more cash for the roads. 
Next, the construction.  We were paying our family fortune to drive roads with lanes closed and construction going on.  Which leads to the third problem.  Accidents.  The final straw was when we started hearing about a 45 minute delay.  That notice came through a good hour before we ever hit the delay.  It was still saying 45 minutes.  Then, as we sat there, it turned into indefinite road closure. 
Having no idea where we were, we exited and spent another good hour driving through some nowhere town looking for a hotel.  Everyone that was stuck on the highway was now in this town.  There were zero hotels.  Hotwire finally told us of one 7 miles away.  I booked it.  But guess what?  It was 7 miles down the closed highway!!  Loren finally got the GPS woman to give us an alternative route to the hotel, which took 27 minutes for 7 miles.  We finally pulled up to the hotel and were very pleasantly surprised that Hotwire had given us a nice Holiday Inn for very cheap. 
We settled in and tried to get ourselves ungrumpy.  We have decided to forgo any other adventures and just head for home.  I checked the routes and finally found one not full of construction.  It may not be the straighest path, but hopefully the least stressful.  Tomorrow we are Austin bound, so stay tuned!