About two weeks ago, I checked off two things on my bucket list: one, sleep overnight in a car, and two, go on a road trip longer than 24 hours.

My sister was moving to Colorado and needed to take her car, and without a mattress or any furniture to move, it became the best excuse ever to hit the road like a couple of hippies looking for a better life out West, emulating the spirit of manifest destiny.

With junk in the trunk of her butte red Chevy and an electric guitar on top of duffel bags on top of tampon boxes on top of jackets, we set out to traverse half the country within two days. A drive that could have taken only 25 hours nonstop turned into 50 hours from leaving Rockland soil and stepping onto Denver grass.

Why was our trip doubled in time? We would be fools to drive through eight states and only grab drive-thru grub. Naturally, we turned to Guy Fieri, Adam Richman, and the Food Network/Travel Channel in general for suggestions.

As much as I would have loved to stop by every featured restaurant along the way, sitting idly in the car doesn’t quite whet the appetite (and I had a budget). Regardless, at the following three restaurants, I’ve had some of the most memorable bites—and seen more roadkill than I would have liked—in places I would have never visited otherwise. Welcome to Wendy’s Road Trip Eats.

Melt Bar & Grilled: 14718 Detroit Ave, Lakewood, OH 44107

Melt was featured in one of Man Vs Food’s gut-wrenching duels. My first reaction to finding this place involved the ravenous urge to follow in Adam Richman’s footsteps and take the Melt Challenge, which consists of three slices of bread stuffed with thirteen different cheeses, complete with twin mountains of fries and sweet slaw. I figured that with my revived love of cheese and the eight-hour trip to Ohio, I could crush that monster for sure.

We ended up bringing snacks for the trip, and of course, my being Wendy, I couldn’t help but snack throughout the ride when I wasn’t driving. Although I was still hungry (as usual) when we arrived, I sadly opted out of taking the challenge because I needed some meat. We got the Smokey Russian and Cleveland Cheese Steak grilled cheeses, both whole, with pickles and one with sweet slaw, the other with fries. Variety is key.

Thank goodness I didn’t have that third slice of bread in the Melt Challenge, because these grilled cheeses are made with Texas toast—and in Texas, the bigger the better. The bread was about an inch thick, buttery and crispy, but a little soggy because we got them to-go, and unfortunately, the water vapor moistened the bread. I could see why they use such thick bread; the sandwich was heavy and threatened to concede to gravity while I was taking my very necessary pictures.

Since it’s called grilled cheese, I was expecting more cheese and less meat, but as a meat-lover, I was pleasantly surprised by the copious layer of turkey between stiffened Gouda. The Cleveland Cheese Steak was not as generous with the meat but still surprisingly generous. The meats were both heavily salted, and the turkey was relatively dry even with Russian dressing dribbling ubiquitously over the sides. I would have liked the Cleveland Cheese Steak better because of its stringy provolone and the moisture from its sautéed veggies and robust aioli, but I’m not a fan of mushrooms. While I typically avoid button mushrooms, I had to give the entire sandwich a try. There was nothing wrong with the mushrooms themselves except for the fact that they’re mushrooms.

Compared to the sandwiches, the sides are not even worth mentioning. The hand-cut fries were seasoned well with salt and pepper, but overly seasoned at that, and they had no crisp. Maybe Ohio likes its potatoes flaccid and shriveled with salt, but I don’t. I do like cole slaw, however, but Melt’s sweet slaw was an exception. It had the same taste palette as everything else—seasoned heavily—with just a touch of sugar and vinegar. It was refreshingly crunchy, but I preferred my pickle spear to it. Forever grateful that I didn’t have to drive after that meal.

Pequod’s Pizza: 2207 N Clybourn Ave, Chicago, IL 60614

While Pequod’s has not been featured on any major Food Network shows that I’m aware of, I couldn’t let us drive through Chicago without trying their deep dish pizza. I’ve never had deep dish before, but I couldn’t just have it anywhere. It had to be in Chicago. Even if it wasn’t good. Even if we had to delay our trip an extra seven hours to wait for the restaurant to open.

Deciding on where exactly to try deep dish was the most difficult part of preparing for this trip. Of course, there were the chains, Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s, both of which have the gooiest, cheesiest pictures on Yelp and the most polar reviews. Lou Malnati’s on South State Street was our original destination, but we didn’t want to pay for parking ($4 an hour—why?! It’s Chicago, not NYC) around that area.

Instead, we drove north to Pequod’s, which was our second choice anyway because of their famous cheese-laden crispy crust and tangy sauce. We went in knowing that there would be less cheese and thicker bread, but they don’t skimp on the toppings (meat, duh). It’s also apparently where the locals eat, and it’s one-of-a-kind, unlike Giordano’s and Lou Malnati’s.

Because we had already arrived in Chicago by 4AM, I had been anxiously waiting for the restaurant to open at 11AM (how we spent those seven hours is a whole other story for another time). We parked a couple feet away from the front door, and I immediately went to try to open the door when I saw someone coming out, around 10:52AM. To my despair, the door was locked still. Frustrated, I climbed back into the car and decided to call them at 10:58. They picked up, and I was able to place the dine-in order over the phone since each pie takes at least half an hour to cook. 10:59 turns into 11:00, and I pushed my sister out of the car to the front door, which was still locked when we tried, but a fellow Pequod’s customer knocked restlessly until the hostess let us in. The restaurant quickly filled with customers within the thirty minutes that we sat there waiting for our 10” pie topped with Italian beef.

When the greatly anticipated moment came, the waitress served our first slice to us. The cheese string was orgasmic.

I spent a good eight minutes taking photos before taking the first bite just to capture the sexy strings before they stiffened. Even when I was done, the cheese hadn’t stiffened—goals right there. The crust was indeed embedded with cheese and would be mistaken for burnt to the uneducated viewer, and that added a delicious depth to an otherwise one-dimensional buttery crust. The sauce was hearty and had character to it thanks to a careful mix of spices, and the Italian beef, to my great pleasure, was plentiful, although unevenly distributed. Two slices for each of us: I frantically ate the first because I was hungry, it was tasty, and I didn’t want the cheese to lose its glorious stretch capacity. Because the last two were drastically different, one dominated by cheese and the other dominated by beef, we cut them into half and we each had half of each quarter.

Even in the last bites, the cheese was still hot and melted, as pizza cheese should be. My sister was still on her first slice when I was digging into my second, and I was done my entire share before she could finish the first half of her second course. Amateur. I was tempted to finish her last eighth of the pie because mysteriously there was still space inside my stomach, but I decided I wanted to drive so I needed as little cheese infiltrating my brain as possible. The service could have been better, but Yelp told us that already. We had miles to drive and more food to eat, and we had stayed in Chicago long enough, and so we left as soon as possible with bloated bellies and our tongues seasoned with Italian spices. Still, cheese strings over G-strings any day.

Stroud’s Oak Ridge Manor: 5410 NE Oak Ridge Rd, Kansas City, MO 64119

Kansas City was another eight hours away from Chicago, and we had wanted to stop by Patton’s Restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa, five and a half hours away and featured on Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. To my dismay, we couldn’t make it to Patton’s Sunday soul food buffet in time before they closed. You win some; you lose some.

We set out directly to Stroud’s Oak Ridge Manor in Kansas City, which is actually in Missouri rather than Kansas. Adam Richman came here to try the famous deep-pan-fried chicken served family style, and my sister and I just don’t pass up crispy fried chicken. There is no great story leading up to Stroud’s, but the food has a novel of its own. Legend has it that Stroud’s fries their chicken with special individual attention in a cast-iron pan rather than dumping the chicken in a deep-fryer until it floats. Their simple flour coating and the contact between the chicken and the bottom of the pan seem to be the secrets to their success.

We arrived at the manor—literally a house-turned-restaurant, perfect for housing home-cooked goodness—half an hour before their closing time, but they still sat us and encouraged us to take our time. I was already overjoyed at the complimentary basket of crackers at the table, but I knew the portions would be large, so I had one and resisted the rest. We ordered the chicken fried chicken and three-piece pan-fried chicken dinner. Both came with homemade chicken noodle soup and shareable sides of mashed potatoes, cottage fries, green beans, and gravy bowl.

You just know the soup was made by chicken lovers who know which cuts of chicken to use for what dish. The soup was flavorful but not overly salty, the chicken was tender, and the noodles are simply indescribable—I had never had such thick, chewy, soft noodles in soup before. I knew that cookies had an optimal texture, but until that night, I didn’t know that noodles in chicken noodle soup did, too.

Of all the sides, the mashed potatoes was the star. I had expected this after reading the Yelp reviews, but I didn’t believe that it could be true. The potatoes weren’t amazing in the conventional way—buttery, fluffy, flavorful—but rather, in a potato-ey way: simple, naturally creamy, and not seasoned such that the pure potato flavor shined. The green beans, too, were striking in a nonconventional way. In fact, they looked terrible like elementary school green beans, steamed too long until limp and brownish colored, falling apart lengthwise and at the seams. Despite all that, they had a clean taste to them, not bland but not salty, brined perfectly by the chunks of meat that were stewed with them. The cottage fries were on the oily side and burning hot, which must have meant they were straight out of the oil, but they didn’t crisp up. Like the mashed potatoes, however, they kept the pure potato taste and were the right thickness to maintain the texture of a chip/fries fusion. I was hesitant to have the gravy because KFC, Popeye’s, and Knorr’s traumatized me with salty oily liquid that solidified into meat jelly at cold temperatures. This gravy, although relatively bland, had a melty and silky consistency to it, like if you were to turn potato into cream. When we refrigerated it in Colorado, it had less of a definite shape than other cold gravies I’ve had. My only criticism is its lack of meat flavor characteristic of gravy, but it worked well with this particular meal.

I haven’t even touched upon the chicken yet, but to sum it up, I’ve never had a refreshing piece of fried chicken before. It was refreshing in that, like the other plates, it was not overly seasoned. The coating wasn’t hard and crunchy, but lightly crispy without bordering on soggy in any part of the chicken. My sister wanted the dark meat because white meat is too dry for her, but I had the breast piece and forced her to try how juicy yet firm—but not chalky or dry—it was, to her surprise. The chicken fried chicken was executed in the same way, just boneless, with gravy on top. I know I could have eaten the rest of the chicken fried chicken and mashed potatoes, but I wanted to save some for Colorado.

No, actually, I wanted to save room for dessert—yes, dessert was also included. Even if we had gone to Patton’s two and a half hours away and stuffed ourselves with soul food buffet, I would have wanted to stop at Stroud’s for their famous cinnamon rolls. The restaurant itself doesn’t exaggerate these rolls, but Yelpers, whether they liked the actual meal or not, all agree that the cinnamon rolls are worth the trip. While my sister could only eat half of one, I stuffed mine down without resistance while the clock turned 9:33PM and they were gathering to close. The roll was burning hot, even that late at night, and covered evenly with enough cinnamon and sugar to flavor the entire thickness of the roll, about three inches in diameter. Even so, the coating was not a sore in that it didn’t cluster and grind uncomfortably against my teeth and make them ache. The unsprinkled dough was a buttery yellow but not greasy or dry. It’s what you would expect from a fresh doughnut, a hybrid between yeast and cake—soft, warm, moist, chewy but melts in your mouth easily, dense with flavor but not dry. I regret not having captured the exquisite cross-section of the inside. This one photo does no justice.

We took about a third of our meal to-go, including two and a half cinnamon rolls, and I spent a good fraction of the remaining ride to Denver just planning when I would have another bite.

At this point, if you've survived my rambling, I don’t have to tell you that this road trip plus the following six days in Colorado constitute one of the best weeks in my life. But now I’ve just reaffirmed it for the world, in case it wasn’t clear.