Home again again.

More reflections coming up. I want to make sure I cover packing and activities and plans for future trips, but let’s return to accommodations for a moment. Last time I listed all the good hotels. Now it’s time for the losers.

Days Inn, which wouldn’t recognize its Veterans’ Discount. UPDATE: Days Inn Headquarters overruled Joanne and promised she would be counseled. They sent us a check. Good job!

Super 8, which wanted us to sign our lives away in case our dogs made noise, but wouldn’t control wild children and nasty parents. UPDATE: The manager there wrote us a letter full of excuses. Not good enough. They still stink.

Ramada Limited, where the physical plant was so decrepit I broke my arm. UPDATE: They refunded our entire stay. Chances are good I won't sue. I'm looking into it, but it may not even be worth the trouble. But I would never stay in one of those again!

Quality and Comfort Inn, where not one pool out of three was both clean and the right temperature. In each of these locations, the staff told one lie or another, and I only mentioned their worst problems here. Their other failings are detailed in earlier blogs, and on hotel review sites. No response from them. Bad hotels. Do not stay there. Last June, coincidentally, I stayed at one of these little complexes near the Philly airport. I don't know the area and needed to get in and out of South Jersey fast. It also stunk. It was a little group of the "Clarion/Sleep/Quality" places and they were just all terrible. Broken things, dirty places, rude, apathetic management. Avoid.

America’s Best Value Inn was in a category of its own. A mom and pop operation, we felt despite the problems, they were really trying to do their best. So we give them a pass. But please, a few hangers and a little cream cheese wouldn’t break the bank. I mean, just collect a few dry cleaning hangers. Or you can get twelve for a dollar at the Dollar Store. Just sayin’.

Also, here’s a word on restaurants. Most of them were good. Really. The food was good, the wait staff was decent. The only restaurant issue we really had was places where there was little or no choice around the hotel, such as Wall and Custer, and the ones that allowed smoking, which we left. The four bad restaurants in a row in Mankato had to be some sort of bizarre coincidence, and we didn’t actually eat in them, anyway. The only bad meals were delivery to our rooms. This is one thing we will try really hard to avoid. The exception to this: Jimmy John’s in the Midwest. Best damned subs ever. And in the Upper Midwest, if there’s game on the menu, and you can eat it, don’t miss it. It will be their specialty and it’s excellent.

Okay, now about attractions. It really depends what you like. We like history and animals and parks. Natural phenomena, primarily. Some of the kooky things in Wisconsin Dells were not the best, but they have their own charm. The best thing we did has to be the helicopter ride in the Black Hills, and all the close-up wildlife in the state and national parks. So do what makes you happy. The Harry Truman home made me happy, too. Many might find it a musty old house, and that’s all it is to them, whereas for me, it's a step back into another time. I love caves and Joyce, eh, not so much. So just do your homework, is my advice.

Packing is an interesting exercise. We had to pack for ourselves and three dogs for seven weeks. Dogs have a lot of gear. I think they had two bags, plus their cages and all the poop bags we collected for the last six months. We had to pack for when we would be doing our own cooking, and for when we might have a microwave and refrigerator, and for when we had none of the above. We had to pack for various anticipated activities, not all of which came to pass, but you never know. As senior citizens, we have a lot of medications, as well as first aid items. And we were going to be in a lot of climates, so that meant everything from bathing suits to lined jackets.

We have a 92 Toyota Previa, and while it has a big interior, it’s not an RV or anything. We fold the back seats up to make room for the cages, and the coolers go behind the front seat on the floor. The bags we will not use every day go further in and down. The ones we will need every night are closer to the doors. We both tried to pack for two or three days at a time so we could leave certain bags in the car. One of us was better at this than the other, who frequently packed extra items in the laundry bag. And then there are souvenirs and other miscellaneous items, like guns and ammo, which have to be locked up. Having made over 20 separate stops, we will make an even greater effort in the future to get all our personal stuff in one bag each, to leave the souvenirs in the van overnight as much as possible and so on. The little cooler is heavy, but it always has to go in, in case there’s no fridge. We managed also to eliminate dragging one cage. The two little dogs can share the plastic cage, and Nick gets a nice pillow in the bathroom when we’re out of the room.

Oh, that’s right! Travel with dogs. I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s a lot cheaper than boarding them, and a lot happier for us to have them along. We don’t doubt for a minute that they would rather have spent the seven weeks at home, but they would rather go with us than board. And they did have some fun, smelling bison poop and the like. Here, look at all the fun they had!











The worst is having to walk them at night in the rain. Joyce can manage them all at once, but I have to take them one at a time so I can see who goes, and what, and where. And then there’s the picking up. It simply has to be done, or pets and their people will become less welcome than they already are. If you are reading this, and you don’t pick up, you aren’t even doing yourselves a favor. If you can change a diaper, you can pick up poop. You don’t even have to touch it if you do it right. In fact, you shouldn’t touch it, but carry hand sanitizer because it will make you feel better. Carry enough of their own food, don’t overdo the treats, make sure they have familiar bedding and toys, and if you rent a cabin, bring old sheets to cover the furniture. Yes, you have to do all these things, or you’re a slob. And enough people ARE slobs, or we wouldn’t keep encountering bad attitudes about dogs.

Finally, the future. We already booked the next trip, but it’s not blogable. We often rent a house on St George Island up in the Panhandle, and we’re going there for ten days in December, coming home for the holidays. All we will do there is vegetate. It’s very quiet. Very few other people will be there. There will be long walks on the beach, kayaking, lunch at the Blue Parrot, jigsaw puzzles, old movies and napping.

As to next summer, we will either go to the Galapagos or take another road trip. We’re leaning toward the desert Southwest; out on I-10, back on I-20, no more than six weeks, with a stop in Kanab, Utah, at Dogtown. When we decide we’ll post it here.
Thanks for joining us on our trip. Now it’s your turn!

Macon for home

Here’s the most exciting thing about Macon: Steak ‘n Shake. It was the first place we ever went to one. We have stayed there, at the La Quinta, several times, because it’s just about a day from Tampa the way we drive. And while it’s not all that far from Chattanooga, because you have to go around Atlanta, it can be quite time-consuming, which is why we only ever drive around Atlanta on a weekend. We never actually drive into it; it’s a city, and we don’t like cities. I do like Chattanooga a lot, as far as cities go. If I had to live IN a city, that would be it, but I would prefer rural Tennessee. I also like the Black Hills a lot. Living near Cedar Rapids would be great, except the cold would kill Joyce and the cottonwoods would kill me. Another great thing about heading south from Illinois was we ran out of cottonwoods, thank God! We were both on huge doses of antihistamines because of them.

First we had to drive to the kennel, and then around Atlanta, which Joyce dreads even under ideal conditions. So I decided I was well enough to drive and just before Atlanta’s ring road, we switched, and I took us all the way down to Macon after that, which was good, because Joyce can never remember there’s a way to avoid downtown Macon, too.

At the kennel, the dogs were beside themselves, and the little ones seemed to have lost weight overnight. A bit of a trauma for them, although we have left them with Dora as long as three weeks and they never seem to mind that. But once we got them, they recovered and probably slept all the way to Macon except to pee. They eat and drink remarkably little while driving, and we have to wet their muzzles to get any water into them at all.

Did I mention it was hot? Hot as hell? Joyce had seen the weather and discovered a high over Georgia that was just trapping incredible heat there, so hot we had to carry the dogs to grass rather than let them walk on hot pavement. Little ones, especially, can get heatstroke very quickly. It was cooler in Miami and South Carolina than it was in Georgia. And it had been raining, and made not the slightest improvement; probably made it even worse.

So we were ready for a swim by the time we arrived, and thank God, this La Quinta has an indoor pool which is NOT hot. And a spa that is. We stayed in that pool about two hours, I think, while we did more laundry. Joyce doesn’t like to come home with a lot of dirty laundry. Some fetish of hers, but I agree with her. It just irks us.

And of course we went to Steak ‘n Shake for dinner, after which we completed our nightly ritual for when we travel with perishables in a cooler. We had to start this when we left Wisconsin, and we picked up again when we left the Big Crappie. The ritual goes like this: Drive to a place that sells ice. Joyce goes in to buy ice, while Liz moves everything from behind the front seats to allow the cooler to slide out. Drain valve is already toward door. Perch cooler over step and release plug. Cooler drains, or as one passing drunk put it, “takes a leak.” Feet get sprayed with cold water, very nice on a hot day. Joyce returns with ice bag, removes all insulating items from cooler and slams new bag in. Cooler is plugged, shoved back in, and has auxiliary baggage piled on top to hold it closed. Repeat every evening until arriving home.

And that’s how you get the refrigerated groceries home safely.

Slow slog to Mankato and the Restaurant Gauntlet

But we couldn’t dilly-dally around the Corn Palace for long, because Mankato, Minnesota, beckoned. Well, not so much Mankato, but Walnut Grove, where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived on the banks of Plum Creek. It took us so long to get there on the back roads that we really only had time to snap a few pics and buy a few books. If not for this site, there would be pretty much no town at all.





She didn’t live IN the town anyway, but in a dugout a couple of miles from it and there’s nothing left of that. From this location, they were driven out by locusts and had to move to Burr Oak, Iowa, to recover, a stop not on their original itinerary, or ours.

We continued to Mankato and got in late which did not make Joyce at all happy. Too long a day. Ordered delivery food, almost always a mistake. Swam after brief discussion with desk clerk. Adult hours begin at 10 PM, kids still in pool, and not quiet kids, either. They complained they had just arrived. Too bad. Adults get two hours, they get 14. Arrive earlier. Enough already with the child-worship.

Mankato was where I got the nerve pinch in my hand. Luckily we had an extra day so we stayed there while I worked that out. Late in the afternoon, or early evening, we decided to go out to eat. Mankato is a college town with a lot of little eateries, and we were just off-campus, so we thought this would be easy enough.

We shouldn’t think. That’s all there is to it. We first drove to a Green Mill restaurant where the host was on the phone when we walked in, and ignored us completely. When a server came up front for something, we asked him about being seated, and he said we’d have to wait because they were understaffed. All right in front of this other guy. So we left. Obviously they weren’t interested in us, so we quickly lost interest in them. We drove to a row of other restaurants and parked, and immediately we saw two dogs in a black car with the windows all the way up, and the sun was out! A dog can fry in less than five minutes in a locked car.

I pulled out my cell phone, but I had no service, so we ran into the closest restaurant to call the police from there. It was a Thai place where you give your order at the counter and they call your number. We asked the woman ahead of us in line to call the police, and right there in front of her daughter, she dithered and couldn’t bring herself to make a decision. She didn’t know the right thing to do, and how to do it, and she demonstrated that to her child. This is why kids don’t learn how to act responsibly and appropriately: their parents have no clue, either.

We then asked the counter-worker to do it, and that was when the man at the front of the line admitted the dogs were his. So we surrounded him and told him to get out and unlock that car or we would call the police or we would put a rock through his window. He argued and she kept trying to get his order but we just kept at him until he went out. And he kept protesting it wasn’t hot and we said we’d see if the police had a thermometer. Anyway, he got the windows down and we waited until he went back for his order and drove away.

That was very difficult for us, and very upsetting, and because the Thai restaurant worker wouldn’t do the right thing, we walked to another place, but it was also do-it-yourself and we were no longer interested. We wanted to sit down someplace decent, so we got back in the car and started driving until we found a Mexican place that turned out to be real nice.

So beware. Joyce may not stand up for her own rights, but she will defend a dog to the death. And if you see animals in distress, stand up and help them. Rescue them, unless you can live with killing apathy.