We arrived at Heathrow airport after dropping off the hire car with plenty of time to spare after all we had 3 hours until departure - or so we thought.

That can't be right said Kerrie after studying the departure board. Oh yes it can! Damn, our American Airlines flight to Chicago was delayed for four hours. Never mind, ever resourceful Kerrie decided she just had more time for Duty Free shopping - Greg was not impressed!

With plenty of vacant seats on our flights Kerrie was able to luxuriate across two seats for a 'short catnap' for several hours or more whilst poor Greg sat up all flight. Nevermind as he managed to watch three new release movies.

After arriving in Chicago around 8pm, clearing border control, collecting the hire car, navigating the freeways we finally reached our hotel and fell into bed exhausted just after 10pm.

The focus of our USA visit is to cross off the four remaining mainland states that we have not yet visited being West Virginia, Vermont, North Dakota and Iowa. So in the morning we pulled out of the hotel carpark with a 450 mile drive in front of us to East Liverpool, Ohio, a stones throw from target number 1, West Virginia.

After a good night's sleep we started our day with a drive beside the Ohio River with the GPS destination of Wheeling, West Virginia. Of course we had to sing along with the Neil Sedaka version of the same name, "Wheeling West Virginia".

The drive by the mighty Ohio River was somewhat disappointing with both sides of the river housing multiple power plants complete with very large stockpiles of the blackest coloured coal and smoking chimneys to boot. So much for global warming control.

Along the way we drove through the town of Steubenville and noticed posters and a street named after the late actor and crooner Dean Martin. There was a good reason for this as we later discovered thanks to our friend google. Dean Martin lived in Stubenville until he left school to work in the local steel mill until he left town to seek his fortune.

We arrived in Wheeling just as the heavens opened up so we took the driving tour option and discovered the streets to be pot hole hell with bump, bump, bump the norm. No matter as we sang "Where is the guy from Wheeling West Virginia?"

We know, out of the rain!

Happy with our visit to Wheeling West Virginia we drove on through the sometimes torrential rain towards our destination for the day - Hamilton, New Jersey the home of The Swank Yank.

To be continued.