Reflections: strangers on a stranger journey.

There sure is a lot to reflect on here, maybe enough for two entries. I’ll just try to go in some sort of logical progression about things we learned, and things we would do differently, and where we might go next.

The most obvious things are stuff like route, time and accommodations. Although our route was boring on occasion, we (well, mostly I) selected it, and parts of it, for particular reasons. There were people or places we wanted to see, so we went there. What I learned about the upper and central Midwest is, except for certain individual locations, which may be very spread out, there’s not a lot to see or do of the kinds of things we like. We did the Ingalls-Wilder stops because we were up that way anyhow. I doubt I would make that sort of trip again because now we have seen it and now we know. We’re really glad we saw the thirteen states we went through, because we just hadn’t seen some of them at all, and now we have, and we wanted to know what was out there. Joyce has five states left to see, which will largely determine where we go next.

We certainly did the right thing by avoiding cities. We only went into Memphis and Chattanooga, and Memphis wasn’t worth it. We are not interested in “nightlife” or “entertainment” or drinking ourselves into oblivion. We hate traffic, noise, dirt and crowds. These things don’t excite us a bit. Except for airports and necessary evils like finding the VA, I doubt we’ll ever deliberately tour a city again, at least, not in North America. Europe is an entirely different story, but it is so easy to travel there, we will probably delay returning there until our late 70s, because anyone can do Europe. We’ll save what’s left of our youth and strength for the more adventurous kinds of travel we prefer at the moment.

As to the time spent, seven weeks is too much, at least of that type of travel. We’ve decided to limit ourselves to six next time, and see how that goes. A lot of the strain of travel had to do with accommodations, and now we have learned a lot more about those. You know, we’ve been traveling for decades, but that doesn’t mean we know it all, because many things have changed in recent years that make road tripping harder than it used to be, and one of them is mean people. So we now know some things to do to avoid them.

Regarding accommodations, we would pay more for a better quality of service. We would scrupulously avoid certain chains, and deliberately seek out others. We wanted to use La Quinta as exclusively as possible, but they aren’t in all the places we wanted to be. So we learned which chains to avoid, and which are a suitable substitute. The best for traveling with animals is La Quinta. Americinn is the most quiet and probably the most attractive. Holiday Inn Express is the most luxurious. And Belmont is second in all categories. We’re sending them all letters of appreciation with a few suggestions on how to become ideal.

That’s enough for one entry. Watch for another one soon.

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.

Wisconsin Dells, or “Why are we here?” Oh, deer!

Guess what happens every mile or so in Wisconsin. Someone kills a deer. It was so regular, and so continuous, it looked deliberate. Jim says it isn’t. It's a big deer hunting state, but they don't go that far. Apparently deer are just very foolish and seeing it happen doesn't prevent others from doing it. These deer were apparently very unlike those we saw in South Dakota, who look both ways before crossing. But we didn’t go there to learn that. We could have lived without seeing it at all. In fact, it’s kind of odd how we did end up there, because it didn’t originally have anything to do with Laura Ingalls; that came later.

Originally, we were going to South Dakota and back, but there were no stipulations about the “and back” part, except Joyce wanted to see some states she'd never been to before. Joyce left the rest up to me, and I decided it would be fun to visit our friend Jim in Wisconsin. And then, there’s the simple fact that, no matter which way you go back to Florida from South Dakota, there’s a lot of miles of not very spectacular farmland to cover and we would already have seen it.

So I asked Jim about the most interesting things to see in Wisconsin, and cities don’t count. We do everything we can to avoid those. He said either Wisconsin Dells or Door County, and the Dells seemed more accessible. Besides I’d been there about half a century ago with my mom. I looked it up, it seemed like fun, AND I found a cabin for rent that allowed dogs.

Joyce had never been to Wisconsin and knew nothing about it. She was agreeable to seeing Jim, too, so we decided to meet there, and Jim could sleep on the pull-out sofa! It was only after we decided to go to Wisconsin Dells that someone in my royalty group mentioned we would be near a lot of Laura Ingalls sites. I had read the books as a kid, but Joyce hadn’t, and she hated the TV show. I talked her into trying the books and got them, and we read them all before we left, learning there were lots more books by other people. So we decided to visit the sites and get more books. That’s what decided some of our daily routes and day trips.

Did I mention how much it’s been raining on this trip? Well, it has been, and in the upper Midwest, it’s been cold besides, so our arrival in Wisconsin Dells was greeted by cold rain. At that point, we didn’t much care. We decided to just settle in for the night and stay put the next day. There’s never a bad time on a long trip for a day off.

The road to Jackson

Approximately 216 miles. Approximately 200 miles of rain. The most interesting thing was the local Shoney's. When we went in the door, the greeeter said, "Smoking or non?" We both shrieked, "Smoking!?!?!?!?" and left. Ended up at Ruby Tuesday's for our evening salad craving, and did laundry. Found a dead cat out back of the motel, a cat we had seen alive and well earlier. We didn't let the dogs see her. Sad. So, on to Memphis!

Mobile Bay and environs

It took only a few hours to get here from Tallahassee, a grueling 159 miles with a lunch break, two pee breaks and a gas stop. In fact, not much longer than it takes us to get out of a motel in the morning, which is two and a half hours. It doesn't matter what we do first: shower, eat, pack. It always takes two and a half hours. Our routine is to barely dress and walk the dogs. Then, depending what time complimentary breakfast is, we either shower and pack first, or shower and eat. Rain or shine, no matter when we get up, it's two and a half hours.

So we actually stayed in Fairhope, which is a small town on Mobile Bay. We got lucky with this lovely little town full of gracious homes and flowers. We also got lucky with a beautiful park on the bay for some exercise with the kids. It was muggy and overcast and very windy. This made the bay rough and not pretty but it's huge and interesting, and there was a super-long pier out into it for a refreshing break.





Also, Fairhope is full of flowers. We got Van O'White to pose with some.



These were ready for their close-up:



Next morning we just skirted Mobile but we can tell you it's HUGE: Bay, USS Alabama, gigantic buildings downtown, bridges, roadways. We had no idea. Take a look at this bridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochrane_%E2%80%93_Africatown_USA_Bridge

Joyce wants me to mention that this is our first trip with three bags of medicatons for us and the dogs. Used to be able to do it with one, but then, this is seven weeks. She also wants everyone to know that there are no security inspections or currency exchanges between the states, so we got through with two pistols, several knives, drugs and our vicious animals. Did I mention Joyce hates flying? Well, we both do.

And, we used every piece of luggage in the house except the huge garment bag for formal wear. We call this assortment our Polish luggage, because except for the four matching bags, nothing matches. This includes shopping bags, beach bags, two coolers, barracks bags, canvas shopping bags, three plastic bags full of poop containment bags, net bags, belly bags, complimentary vacation location bags and . . . no wonder it takes two and a half hours to pack the van. And we don't even unload a lot of it, because it's for our long stops.

Next blog will cover the Fairhope to Jackson, Mississippi leg. Don't hold your breath!

First two days: Antiques road show

Monday was day one!

So, it's day three now, and for all I know, this will be posted in upside down, reverse order. So sometimes you may have to scroll down and work back up.

Just so you know, we aren't in any big rush. We left Brandon at 9:40 AM and seven minutes later, stopped in Seffner at McDonald's for breakfast. And two more minutes after we left there, we stopped in Mango for gas. That held us until a little after eleven, when we stopped on I-75 North at a whole different rest area than ever before!

Overwhelmed with the novelty of it all, we got back in the car and didn't stop again until the tiny Panhandle town of Lee, with a Burger King, and all the ambience of an industrial wasteland. There, we had a small meltdown over Lizzie's superb driving ability which is somewhat underappreciated by Big Joycie. Big Joycie sees it differently, but she isn't typing this blog.

We drove the last 40 or so miles to North Tallahasee without further incident, and checked into a LaQuinta around three PM, logging 275 or so miles! The AAA recommended a small park nearby, so we took the dogs and were soon at the Lake Jackson Archaeological Park. It is a real little gem of a place, and we had it all to ourselves.

Here's the site: http://www.floridastateparks.org/lakejacksonmounds/default.cfm

Here's what it looked like when we visited:



Speaking of sights and sites, we took pictures but I'm not posting them until we stop someplace longer than overnight. This may happen around Memphis.

So after dinner, we basically collapsed. We all slept a good eight hours, which was great since we only slept about three hours the night before. The dogs are just being excellent little travellers, and people always stop and pet them or take their picures.

Speaking of the dogs, you know how kids are: stuff always happens, and usually at the last minute. Last Thursday, we took Stella and Ollie to the groomer. They did a great job on Ollie, but scalped Stella. We'll post a photo before she grows in too much. She looks pretty much much the same as two years ago when she almost died. But no grooming required!

Friday, Nick jumped off a bed and apparently tweaked a knee ligament. Three days of immobility and a lot of drugs later, he's back to his usual athletic pursuits.

Okay, I'm only two days behind now. Tonight we're in Pearl, Mississippi; tomorrow we're off to Memphis for a couple of days. More as soon as I can generate some enthusuaism for computing on vacation. Blech!

We're (almost) off!

We're leaving in about ten days for our (projected) seven week trip through the Great Plains states. We're thinking of calling it "Antiques Road Show" because we're 65 and 56, our transportation, Van O'White, is 17, and our eldest dog, Nick, is 14. We hope the little ones, Stella, who is five and three-year old Ollie, will be patient with us.

Here we are at the beach last summer:

Our route, if we make it the whole way, will go something(!) like this:

Tampa - Tallahssee- Mobile (outskirts) - Jackson (outskirts) - Memphis - Branson- Independence - Des Moines - Clear Lake- Mount Rushmore - Wisconsin Dells - Springfield, IL - LandBetweenTheLakes and home again. If we don't kill each other first. There's a lot of wiggle room in there for detours to various "Little House" locations which we have recently become obsessed with. I read all the Laura Ingalls works as a kid, but Joyce didn't, and just now we have both (re)read them. So we'll be stopping here and there to see the sites/sights. We only have three "real" reservations where we plan to stop for a week at a time. For example, we'll be a week, including Memorial Day, in Custer, South Dakota, because we don't want to travel on that weekend. Another week in Wisconsin and a third in Kentucky. The rest of the time, we'll just amble along and give the kids a chance to poop all over the Great Plains. We will also stop and see friends we first met on the internet.

So we'll see how we like an extended road trip. and if we survive, maybe we'll take another one someday. Joyce just thought, in this economy, it would be better to do a "pay as you go" more or less trip, instead of having to plunk down megabucks all at once.

Stay tuned!