The next day we checked out and made our way to Memphis. Every time we’ve been to that city, we’ve made it a point to stop in at the Peabody Hotel downtown for drinks or a meal or just to see the famous ducks in the lobby. This time, however, we were checking in for a few days.

The Peabody opened in its original location in 1869 and a lot of famous people have visited it over the years, from Johnny Cash to Michael Jordan to the Dalai Lama. Elvis had his high school prom there, and he came back a few years later to sign the paperwork for his RCA deal, some of it scrawled on Peabody stationary. Tom Cruise shot parts of The Firm on the rooftop.

The Peabody’s French restaurant, Chez Philippe, is arguably one of the best restaurants in Memphis, so naturally my wife and went across the street for burgers at Huey’s. We didn’t shoot any toothpicks into the ceiling, but apparently it’s the thing to do.

Between Huey’s and Corky’s, we stayed away from the hotel restaurants and still had a lot of good food. The only meal we had in the hotel was a magnificent Sunday brunch at the Capriccio Grill.

Writer David Cohn has written,

The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg. The Peabody is the Paris Ritz, the Cairo Shepheard’s, the London Savoy of this section. If you stand near its fountain in the middle of the lobby, where ducks waddle and turtles drowse, ultimately you will see everybody who is anybody in the Delta and many who are on the make.

That a great paragraph, and it was probably true when Cohn wrote it. The Peabody has a long history of ups and downs — it moved to a new building in 1925, and it went completely out of business in the 1970s (along with most of downtown Memphis), before being take over by new owners — so the Peabody today isn’t as connected to its history as they like to pretend, but it’s still a beautiful old hotel, full of rich architectural detail wherever you look.

If you find yourself visiting Memphis, you should at least stop in and have a drink in the lobby.

Whenever we’re away from home, my wife begins to miss the cats, so on long trips I like to try to find local rescue shelters where we can visit some kitties. In Memphis we stopped in at Mewtopia Cat Rescue, a small shelter in a converted former veterinary clinic in eastern Memphis. The volunteer staff told us stories about how they had acquired the place, a former veterinarian’s office, and the work they did to refit it as a cat shelter. It seems like a good place for lost cats.

As we walked around, I noticed one cat kept coming back to rub against my legs. I had the urge to pick him up, but I didn’t want to spook him, so instead I sat down to see if he’d sit in my lap. Sure enough, within a few seconds he climbed up and then put his paws on my shoulder and purred as he nuzzled my neck. A few minutes later in the kitten room I noticed a cat watching me intently, so I turned away slightly and hunched down, and he jumped right up onto my shoulders. Apparently I now have an unsettlingly good grasp of cat body language.

On our way home to Chicago we spent the night in St. Louis. We both (totally unfairly) think of St. Louis as an armpit because our last time there we stayed in a crappy roach-infested Days Inn. Determined to give the city another chance, we stayed in a somewhat more expensive room at the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel…which didn’t quite work out.

There weren’t any roaches, but the hotel had just been through some major renovations, and everything had that not-quite-ready feel. For example, even though we had some kind of “executive” room, the desks hadn’t been installed yet, so the hotel sent someone to setup a chair and a card table (fortunately we bring our own outlet strip). And when we hit the hotel restaurant for late dinner the staff seemed flustered, like they weren’t really used to dealing with guests.

I know, I know, I’m whining. But given the high quality of the last three hotels, it was a bit of a letdown, and not nearly enough cheaper to make it a good deal.

That was one of the things I learned on this trip: Stay at convenient but relatively inexpensive hotels while traveling and save the nicer hotels for the destinations.

Speaking of hotels, here’s the scorecard:

Fastest wi-fi: Opryland Hotel.

Most over-priced wi-fi: Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel.

Best customer service: Opryland Hotel.

Best feeling like a big shot: The Peabody, especially when swiping my key card in the elevator to get it to stop on our “special” floor.

Most overpriced soda pop: Opryland Hotel.

Fastest elevators: Marriott Courtyard Louisville Downtown.

Slowest elevators: The Peabody.

Most comfortable bed: The Peabody.

Ever since I took up the hobby of photography, I’ve had to deal with the issue of people getting annoyed or suspicious when I start taking pictures. On private property they often ask me to stop, and even on public property they ask questions, especially at night.

One good exception is weddings, like the one that started our trip. My photography hobby has transformed weddings from tedious social occasions to exciting opportunities for picture taking. People actually want me to take pictures, and they appreciate when I post them.

I learned about another nice exception on this trip: You can wander the halls of great hotels like the the Opryland and Peabody taking pictures, and even at 2 am nobody will question you. This seems like something I’ll be able to put to good use in the future.

One last thing I learned is that once I relaxed and surrendered to the higher-than-normal cost of everything on this vacation, I got used to spending money. $120 dinners for two began to seem normal, and why not get a few 20-ounce bottles of Diet Pepsi for the room at $3.00 each? I was going price-blind.

Anyway, when we woke up the next morning, we skipped breakfast, GTFO of St. Louis, and drove almost straight through to Chicago. We stopped at home long enough to bring up a load of luggage and turn on the air conditioning, and then we drove to dinner at Ledo’s Pizza while the place cooled off.

Life was back to normal.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Road Trip 2015 – Part 2 of 2

On Saturday, we went downstairs to a special room the wedding party had rented for the bridal party to prepare. They had a couple of hairdressers in, and then my wife spent a couple of hours helping the bridesmaids get made up — she’s got some makeup skills — and I took pictures.

Then it was on to the ceremony — which was nice and short — and then off to the reception, which turned out to be great fun. It was also a chance for me to try out the low-light shooting capabilities of my new camera gear. Between some fast lenses and the high ISO you can get from cameras these days, I was very happy with the results.

The next day, we got out relatively early and drove east into Indiana and then south down I-65. (I think every driving trip I’ve taken in this century has required a drive on I-65 in Indiana.) The sun was still up when we veered off I-65 to take highway 31 onto the Clark bridge for the river crossing into Louisville.

We checked into the Marriott Courtyard Louisville Downtown, which was very empty — I got a parking space right next to the elevator. This hotel turned out to be a lot nicer than the one we had stayed in for the wedding, with fast elevators, working plumbing, and a comfy pillow-top mattress on the bed.

For dinner, based on the recommendation of a coworker of mine, we drove back across the river for snacks at Cluckers, which turns out to be a surprisingly good place to relax on Sunday night after a long drive. It’s simple food in a laid-back environment, with a nice view of the river.

On Tuesday morning we got back onto I-65 the next morning and headed south toward Nashville. We were making good time, and so we were puzzled when Google navigation pinged to ask us if we wanted to take a route that was 4 minutes faster. That seemed odd, because hadn’t it already chosen the fastest route? Assuming it was a GPS glitch, I decided to ignore it.

A few minutes later we ran into a traffic jam and came to a complete halt. We weren’t even inching forward. We were stopped. Google Maps traffic showed the road solid red for the next half mile. It seemed likely that something bad had happened just ahead of us, but it was too far away to see what.

We had stopped just a couple of hundred yards past the off-ramp to Bethel road, and I could see a stream of cars getting off and turning left. I guess this was probably what Google would have advised us to do. As we waited, I saw a firetruck arrive on Bethel and take the on-ramp to the expressway ahead of us.

While I waited, I got out and took a few pictures, and I surveyed the landscape between the expressway and the ramp for the exit we had just missed, trying to decide if our Acura RDX could cross it. On the one hand, the RDX is sold as a crossover vehicle and has all-wheel drive. On the other hand, it’s not really much of an SUV. On the third hand, gently sloping land isn’t exactly challenging terrain. On the fourth hand, I’ve heard that grass can be unpredictably slippery or muddy. Ultimately, I decided to just wait.

After about half an hour traffic suddenly started crawling forward. As usual, people weren’t ready for it. If you’ve never been in a large expressway standstill before, it’s surprising how fast cars get moving once the blockage is cleared. They don’t reach a very high speed, but the impulse for the transition from stopped to moving propagates backward surprisingly fast. If you’re outside your car and you notice movement ahead, you need to rush quickly if you don’t want people driving around you.

When we reached the location of the blockage, our two southbound lanes were still blocked by about five or six emergency vehicles, and we all had to squeeze by on the right shoulder. Off to the left we could see an appalling mess. It looked like a guy in a white pickup had been towing a mobile home which had somehow gone off the left edge of the highway and flipped over the guard rail into the ditch. It had broken open, spilling blankets, clothing, shoes, coolers, and a hundred other personal effects all over. There was no way to tell if anyone had been inside. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to let anyone ride in a trailer being towed that way, but I know some people do it anyway.

We eventually reached our first real vacation destination, the Opryland hotel. I had visited the place many years ago for a tech convention, although I stayed across the street in cheaper accommodations. Then a few years later, my wife and I passed through and had a nice dinner in the Cascades restaurant. This time, we were going to stay in the hotel for a few days.

The Opryland hotel is frackin’ huge. It’s got a couple of thousand rooms divided into sections separated by enclosed, climate-controlled garden areas filled with pathways, fountains, and restaurants. It’s a beautiful place, and I highly recommend you stop in just to see it if you’re ever in the area.

On the other hand, all of the meandering gets a bit tiring after a while, and it seemed that no matter where we wanted to go, it was always a long walk to get there (top speed: mozy). Wear comfortable shoes, and ask for a map or be prepared to ask directions a lot. The paths are confusing, and the bellman told me it takes about a month to really learn your way around.

Also bring a lot of money. A giant resort hotel like Opryland has everything you need for a few days, and it’s a pain in the ass to leave the property, so they get to jack up all the prices. And although the Cascades restaurant had some really tasty dishes that might be worth the money, there’s something just wrong about the overpriced burgers at Stax. And someome should tell them that selling bottles of Diet Pepsi for $3.50 makes Baby Jesus cry.

On Tuesday night we attended a show at the Grand Ole Opry. I’m not a huge fan of country music so I didn’t know any of the acts except Rascal Flatts, but my wife knew about half of them and she had a really good time. I had a good time too. Country music is a lot more fun when it’s performed live right in front of you.

A friend recommended that we try the Old Hickory Steakhouse in the Delta area of the hotel, so that’s where we ate on our last night. It was a meal to remember. First of all, because this was our anniversary vacation, the hotel comped the entire meal, which would not have been cheap.The Caesar salad was startlingly fresh, the steak was very good, and the side dishes were all great. The oddest thing I’ll remember about our meal, however, was our waiter, Paul.

All of the staff at the Opryland Hotel have clearly had impressive amounts of customer service training, but Paul took it to the next level: He was efficient without being brusque, friendly without being intrusive, attentive without being smothering, and he seemed to be a good spirited fellow in a way that didn’t feel forced. It’s weird to say this, but I think he might be the best waiter I’ve ever had.

That’s enough for now. I’ll wrap this up in the second half.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Road Trip 2015 – Part 1 of 2

Since I referred to the previous trips as the “Windypundit Coastal Dash”, I was trying to come up with a snappy name for this one. In keeping with the tone of this blog, I had pretty much settled on the “New Madrid Seismic Zone Excursion,” but since this trip is also sort of an early celebration our 25th wedding anniversary, I decided to go with something less darkly portentous.

As usual, it would be great to meet up with some friends of the blog along the way. So far I’ve managed to visit with Jennifer Abel, Jeff Gamso, Mirriam Seddiq, Norm Pattis, and Gideon, and it would be nice to meet a few more of you. So if you’re in one of the cities or on the route, let me know soon so we can plan.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Fifth Annual Windypundit Road Trip Coming Up

I woke up the next morning and started my drive to Avalon. I decided to take the Merrit Parkway into New York City because it sounded more scenic, and I wanted to try out the GoPro camera now that I had a good memory card. This time I tried mounting it by sticking it out through the moon roof and clamping it in place with the motorized sliding panel. Unfortunately it got tilted to one side almost immediately. I can correct that in post, but there isn’t nearly enough resolution to play with in video as there is in a still image.

Here’s a sample of what I got:

I reached New York at a reasonable time of day, but that didn’t stop me from getting stuck in bad traffic. It took me a good hour to get through the bulk of the city. Maybe longer. Eventually I made it onto the Garden State Parkway. I had wanted to get some video of that, but it was raining and I was running a bit late.

My wife had flown out earlier, and she had rented a car at the airport to get around, so the plan was for her to drop it back office at the Atlantic City airport rental car return, where I would pick her up on the way to Avalon. There was some construction at the airport, and we both got confused and parked in the wrong place — she was in airport parking of some kind, and I had driven my car into the rental car return area. She eventually brought her car in, and I got a ticket from the rental agent to get our car out of the lot.

Then we drove down into south Jersey to Avalon, where our friends had rented a house for a couple of weeks.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at 2013 Road Trip Report – Part 4: The Road to Avalon

I got up the next morning and took advantage of the complimentary breakfast before heading out on the road. There was some decent weather, so I pulled off the road to setup the GoPro again. This time I wedged it in place in the moonroof, and drove from one exit to the next. I discovered that it only got about 10 seconds before it stopped. I tried it a few more times, and that’s all it did: Record for about 10 seconds and stop. A little internet research at the next rest stop told me that the memory card I was using was too slow. It was only class 4 and I needed class 10.

(Why did it work the first time? I think I may have had it set to a lower resolution than full 1080. Why did Target sell it to me with a GoPro HERO3 if it won’t work? I’m not sure, but perhaps it’s good enough for the White Edition they were selling.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon driving to the Hyatt House in Shelton, Connecticut, just outside of New Haven. It’s a nice place.

I let Gideon know that I was there, and he got in touch with Norm Pattis, and they figured we should eat around 6:15 at Sally’s Apizza, although Gideon said he thought Frank Pepe’s just down the block was better.

I still needed to get a class 10 MicroSD card for my GoPro camera. I looked around for electronics and office supply stores, and there were a few in the area, but although I was sure they would have MicroSD cards, I couldn’t be sure they’d have the high-quality class 10 variant. (Calling them would probably be an exercise in frustration and perhaps being lied to.) I decided to look for professional photography stores, because pro photographers worry about things like memory card quality and transfer rate.

It turned out that I could stop at Milford Photo without adding more than a few minutes to my drive downtown. The gentleman who helped me there instantly knew exactly what I wanted, and why, and he had them in stock in several sizes. I bought a 32GB card, and while he was ringing it up we got into a discussion of whether anybody really needed all those pixels you get in modern high-end cameras. We both agreed they seemed unnecessary, except for some special cases. Having bonded over this issue, I left satisfied at maybe finally solving the GoPro problem.

By the time I got to the pizza place, Gideon had called and said something about Sally’s looking like it was closed so we should just go to Pepe’s. I parked in Pepe’s lot, all the way in back, and went to the end of the line of people waiting to get in. I started looking around to see if I could spot them.

Gideon had only given me a very brief description of himself, but I had seen pictures of Norm (although I’m bad enough with faces that that doesn’t really help). I saw a man in a suit across the street who looked like he might have the requisite pony tail. And there was a guy ahead in line who might have matched Gid’s description, but when he looked at me, he showed no signs of recognition. (My photo is on my blog, so Gid should recognize me.) Then I saw the Norm-looking guy cross the street to meet another guy coming toward us who kind of matched Gid’s self-description. I walked over and introduced myself.

I had originally planned to take some photos — with Gid’s face appropriately obscured by random objects to protect his anonymity — but never got around to it. For the record, Norm looks a lot like his photos, except in real life he’s a lot more vibrant. (His photographer does great work, so I don’t know what the problem is.) As for Gideon, he needs to remain anonymous, so I don’t want to give too much away…let’s just say that in appearance he’s somewhere between DJ Qualls and Henry Cavill.

We got back in line and went inside to get some pizza. I can’t remember the details of the conversation, but Norm and Gid spent a lot of time talking about local cases and issues, which was kind of fascinating to a legal spectator like me. The pizza was decent too. Norm had just won some sort of big case, so he picked up the tab, thus forever earning my gratitude.

(Hmm… Norm and Gid wanted to eat at different restaurants, and after some discussion we ended up eating where Gid wanted, but Norm paid. I’m not sure, but I think that means Gideon is the better lawyer.)

When I got back to my hotel, I saw some kind of fire truck and about a dozen firefighters gathered in front. I spent a minute watching from a distance — if something was happening, I wanted to stay out of the way — but they weren’t wearing turnout gear and it looked like a senior firefighter was lecturing the rest of them. I guess it was a familiarization exercise of some kind, perhaps to discuss how to fight hotel fires, or perhaps to learn their way around that building when it wasn’t on fire.

Anyway, I got back to my room a little before 9pm, and I tried to figure out what to do for the rest of the evening. At least that’s the last thing I remember before I fell asleep.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at 2013 Road Trip Report – Part 3: Connecticut

As usual, it would be great to meet up with some of you along the way. So far I’ve managed to visit with Jennifer Abel, Jeff Gamso, Mirriam Seddiq, Norm Pattis, and Gideon. (Yeah, that’s right, I know Gideon’s secret blogger identity!) It would be nice to meet a few more of you — or see some of you again. So if you’re interested, and you can accommodate our somewhat unpredictable driving schedule, let me know soon.

Don’t worry if you’re not on the route on the map. Our plans are still pretty loose and the map is just a rough guess — we could easily veer off hundreds of miles in any direction. On the other hand, we’ll be making it up as we go along, so it’s a little hard to say exactly what days we’ll be where. (Except for my cousin Mallory’s wedding, which we do plan to get to on time, even though we still haven’t received our invitations, but the mother of the bride promises me we’re invited. It’s a bit of a scandal, if you ask me.) We’ll have a better idea of the schedule once we’re underway.

Email me for details if you’re interested: mark@windypundit.com

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Fourth Annual Windypundit Coastal Dash: This Time It’s Backwards

At the first stop, I decided to try out my new GoPro video camera. My wife had given it to me for Christmas, and I haven’t been able to find time to play with it. I wanted to use it to capture some of the drive, since still photos don’t really capture the experience.

So I tried setting it up and…problem: The camera reports an SD error whenever I try to start recording. That means it can’t save the video to the MicroSD memory card. I could presumably buy another MicroSD card anywhere, but was that really the problem? Or was the it the camera that was malfunctioning by being unable to access memory cards. Since I have limited time on this trip, I decided to try it both ways.

When I stopped for lunch at one of the tollway rest stops, I got on the WiFi and found out from the GoPro website that Target carries their cameras. I found a Target at the next exit and went the the camera section, where I bought both a 16GB MicroSD memory card (with adapter) and a new GoPro HERO3 White Edition camera. My plan was to try out the memory card in my current camera and if that didn’t work, open the box on the new camera and use that.

I decided to make a little headway before fooling around with it any more, but at a later rest stop I decided I’d driven far enough to take a break and try the GoPro again. The camera didn’t seem to hate the new MicroSD card, so I mounted it on the inside of the window with a suction cup, turned it on, and drove to the next rest stop, where I removed it. I was planning to take a few more test shots and look at them in the hotel.

All this time I had been driving across Ohio, and let me tell you this: Interstate 80 through Ohio is really boring. Eastern Ohio is flat and uninteresting driving, and it’s a limited-access toll road, where all the rest stops are the same.

And then there’s the road construction. It didn’t create traffic jams, but in every construction zone the official speed limit on I-80 dropped from 70 miles per hour to 55. And it seemed like everything was under construction. Just as I’d be getting into the rhythm of 70 mph traffic, we’d hit another construction zone and have to slow down, crawling along on roads designed for much higher speeds. Then I’d see those magic words “End Work Zone” and finally get to speed up again…until I hit the next construction zone. At one point, as I was passing the “End Work Zone” sign, I could already read the “Reduce Speed” sign where the next construction crew had set up.

Just past Youngstown, as it began to get darker, I caught up to the storm again — or at least I caught up to a storm of some kind — which put an end to my video experiments. (The GoPro housing is weatherproof, but that doesn’t keep raindrops from obscuring the view.) I then crossed over into Pennsylvania and spent the next next 6 hours driving on unfamiliar winding mountain roads, in the rain, surrounded by trucks. About half of it at night.

And I loved it. I’ve always enjoyed driving. I find it…not relaxing, exactly. But I like the feeling of focus that comes from a long drive. I’ll be cruising along in the right-hand lane and I’ll start to creep up on a truck, so I flip on the left turn signal, change lanes, pass it, signal again, and move back to the right. Problem solved.

A few minutes later, I’m creeping up on another truck, but a third truck is overtaking me at the same time. It looks like it will want to pass me about the same time I’m trying to pass the truck in front of me, and that won’t work on a two-lane road. I could just slow down, let the overtaking truck pass me, and then follow him around the truck in front of of us. Or I could speed up and pass the truck in front, and then let the overtaking truck pass us both. Whatever I decide, I just do it and move on.

About an hour after it gets dark, I’m rolling through the night on cruise control, on a straight piece of road, with trucks about a quarter mile ahead and behind me. I’m just enjoying the ride. Then the truck ahead of me gets my full attention as its hazard flashers come on. That would makes sense if it was coming to a stop. At night, in the rain, it’s hard to judge distance, and a following vehicle might not be able to tell if a vehicle far ahead has stopped, so truckers often do this. I now watch carefully, and I after a few seconds I can tell I’m gaining, so I begin slowing down.

Now I have to make sure the trucker behind me knows I’m stopping, so I flip on my hazard flashers, and a few seconds later I see his hazard flashers start up. And just like that, we all come to an orderly stop and then begin crawling forward slowly. After a few minutes, vehicles in front of me start merging left, and I can see lights flickering from an emergency vehicle ahead. A minute later, I pass a police car that is blocking the right lane because the storm has blown down a tree across most of it. A few seconds after that, we’re all accelerating to 65 mph again.

Winding roads, trucks, poor visibility, police cars, and fallen trees. There’s nothing complicated about any of it, nothing requiring long-term thinking. I just have to stay focused and pay attention. It’s a continual series of small problems that I can solve one after another, never looking back, never planning more than a minute or two ahead.

Eventually I arrive at my hotel in Wilkes-Barre, the Best Western Plus East Mountain Inn & Suites, which was hidden back from the road a bit. It had bell carts, so I had an easier time getting everything up to my 4th floor room. I farted around on the internet a bit — again after having to ask the front desk for the password (why don’t they just put it on a note in the room?) —  before falling asleep.

Finally, here’s a sample of the video I got while I was driving through. This was just an experiment, so there’s no real point to it, and mounting the camera inside the car leaves too much of the dashboard visible. But I need to get more experience editing, so here goes. Best viewed full-screen to see the super-wide angle from the GoPro:

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at 2013 Road Trip Report – Part 2: The Zen of Driving

It looks like I never got around to posting about last year’s summer road trip. Since it’s getting close to time for my next one, I figure I better post something. Excuse me if I ramble a bit…

I started the trip the way I always do, working through checklists of things to pack — clothes, meds, toiletries, still camera, video camera, computer — and checklists of everything I have to do before leaving — fill cat food and water bowls, vacuum, turn off all computer speakers, unplug office phone, put TV remote where cats can’t step on it, thermostat set, alarm clock off, all lights off, webcams on so we can see the cats from wherever we are.

I had hoped to get going relatively early in the day so I could make it through Chicago as quick as possible, but I didn’t get going until the afternoon traffic started to get heavy and slow, and it took about an hour and a half to reach the Skyway Bridge into Indiana.

As is my tradition, as soon as I crossed the border into Indiana, I stopped at the Gas-a-Roo to fill up on cheap gas.

My next stop was also part of my road-trip tradition: Wagner’s Ribs, about 25 miles down the road in Porter, Indiana. I met with my friends George and Rich who I used to work with back in the ’90’s.

Rich lives in Chicago’s western suburbs, and shortly after we sat down he got a call from home telling him that heavy storm had hit his area, and his house had lost power. A half hour later, he got a call saying the storm had passed. He checked the weather radar, and it showed a narrow but intense squall line passing over Chicago. Since wind speeds were about 30 miles per hour, we knew the storm would be on us in half an hour or so. Sure enough, shortly after we got the check, a sudden heavy rain started to fall and the winds picked way up. The trees outside were rocking back-and-forth in the heavy winds and Wagner’s lost power twice.

The storm blew over in half an hour, but we decided to stick around a little longer. The weather pattern was headed east at 30 miles per hour, and I would soon be headed east at 70 miles per hour, which meant I’d catch up to it before reaching the hotel if I left too soon. Since the rain had kept the dinner crowd away, nobody minded that we kept the table.

Finally, with the storm an hour or so ahead of me, I left and headed east toward my first night’s stop. Actually, I first drove to a truck stop and got some snacks for the road — more delaying — before hopping on I-80 eastbound. By continuing to make gratuitous use of rest stops, I managed to keep the storm out in front of me, only occasionally getting sprinkles on the windows before reaching my hotel, the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham in Holland, Ohio, on the outskirts of Toledo.

It took two trips to carry all my bags into the room, which turned out to be a full extended stay suite. My room had a full kitchen, complete with full-size refrigerator, kitchen sink, microwave, electric range, and cabinets full of glassware, china, and silverware. I didn’t need any of it, but the rate had been really good.

I had brought some left over Ledo’s pizza in the cooler, and I ate some of it out of a plastic bag for a late night snack. I could have actually poured my Diet Coke into a glass and eaten left-over Ledo’s pizza on a plate, but that just seemed excessive.

I got on the hotel WiFi — only after a call to the front desk to get the password — to check my mail and surf for a bit, but I was tired from the long day, so after about an hour I just plopped down on the bed right on top of the covers and fell asleep in the nice cool room. I woke up freezing in the middle of the night and had to crawl under the covers.

Update: Part 2 is up.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at 2013 Road Trip Report – Part 1: The Road to Toledo

My plan is to drive from Chicago to somewhere in Connecticut, work my way down the Jersey shore to Avalon, and then swing back south through Virginia and Kentucky on my way to Chicago. As usual, it would be great to meet up with some of you along the way. So far I’ve managed to visit with Jennifer Abel, Jeff Gamso, and Mirriam Seddiq on these trips, and I would love to meet a few more of you — or see some of you again.

Our plans are only just beginning to firm up, so if you’re interested in meeting and you’ll be in the zone, just let me know and I’ll try to swing by. Don’t worry if you’re not on the route on the map — that’s just a rough guess, and I could easily veer off hundreds of miles in any direction.

Email me for details if you’re interested.

*** REPEAT: Special note to Blonde Justice: It’s not too late. If you’re in this territory, you can help me end my near decade-long obsession with your secret identity by meeting with me. I won’t share your secrets with anyone.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Third Annual Windypundit Coastal Dash – Now Including Connecticut

As usual, it would be great to meet up with some of you along the way. So far I’ve managed to visit with Jennifer Abel, Jeff Gamso, and Mirriam Seddiq on these trips, and I would love to meet a few more of you — or see some of you again.

Our plans are still pretty loose, but if any of you are in the zone where I’ll be traveling, let me know and we’ll try to swing by. Don’t worry if you’re not on the route on the map — that’s just a rough guess, and I could easily veer off hundreds of miles in any direction

Email me for details if you’re interested.

*** Special note to Blonde Justice: If you’re in my travel zone, I would like to meet with you and bring to an end my near decade-long obsession with your secret identity. If you choose to reveal yourself to me — even if you don’t give me your full identity — I promise I will take your secrets to my grave.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Third Annual Windypundit Coastal Dash

When I visited with my family in eastern Kentucky, we drove up to Breaks Park, which is located in the mountains along the Kentucky/Virginia border. I got a few pictures on that trip.

To start with, we’re in the mountains, so constructing anything larger than an outhouse means hauling away some part of a hillside to make a flat spot. It wasn’t unusual to see equipment like this articulated dump truck, designed for hauling heavy loads over uneven terrain.

I don’t know what these are, but I just liked the picture.

Once we got into Breaks Park, I began trying to take pictures of the woods. It loses something in the translation to 2-D, though.

We ate at the Lodge, where I got some nice shots of my Uncle Hagan.

Then it was back to wandering the park. The most interesting shots were at an overlook into a deep valley.

I was able to find the location of this next shot on Google Maps. If you rotate the view around, you can see the platform I stood on to get some of these pictures.

And here’s a rail bridge we passed on the way back.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Coastal Dash 2012 Travelogue – Part 4

On the way from New Jersey to Kentucky I stopped in the D.C. area to meet some friends I used to work with, and then the next day my wife and I met up with Feral Genius Jennifer Abel, who’d just recently moved there.

Then we headed south to Front Royal, Virginia, which anchors the northern end of the most famous scenic route through Shenandoah National Park: Skyline Drive.

I took 129 photos, so there should be plenty of good stuff. Let’s see…hazy view of rolling hills, hazy view of rolling hills, hazy view of rolling hills, winding road, hazy view of rolling hills, hazy view of rolling hills, interesting tree, hazy view of valley, hazy view of rolling hills…

Actually, some of that haze wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill haze. When we entered the park, the ranger informed us that there was a small wildfire in one section. Protip: You get better landscape photos if you take them when the landscape isn’t on fire.

Update: Part 4 is up.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Coastal Dash 2012 Travelogue – Part 3

When I went to Avalon in 2011, I was pretty disappointed in the pictures I took. I saw a lot of interesting spots filled with local color that seems a bit exotic to a Midwestern city boy like me. But I was in vacation mode and couldn’t quite bring myself go out of my way to take pictures of any of it, so I just took snapshots of whatever places I happened to be. I kept telling myself that I’d take more pictures next time.

Well, this time was next time, and I did pretty much the same thing. Still, here are a few pictures, starting with this shot of the shore at Avalon:

Just a few miles down the shore in Stone Harbor is Villa Maria By-the-Sea, a retreat for the teaching nuns of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart order.

The town of Avalon is the northernmost incorporated area of a series of barrier islands. I got a few pictures while I was driving across the lagoon between the islands and the shore.

Finally, down at the southern end is Cape May Harbor, where I had lunch at Schooner bar at the Lobster House on one of the small islands. Here’s a picture of the dock area.

That’s it. So maybe I’ll try to get better pictures next time.

Update: Part 3 is up.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Coastal Dash 2012 Travelogue – Part 2

The trip started the same as any trip from Chicago must start: Stuck in traffic. I left home around 6pm on Friday, so I caught the tail end of the rush hour as I drove through downtown Chicago to get to Indiana. It was pretty rough going into town, but it got better on the way out.

After crossing the border into Indiana, as is my tradition, I filled up on that cheap non-Illinois, non-Cook-County, non-Chicago gas at the Gas-a-roo.

My first real stop for the evening was meeting my friends George and Rich for dinner at Wagner’s ribs in Porter, Indiana. Wagner’s does really good Chicago-style ribs. I prefer to ask for them “Tim’s Style,” which isn’t on the menu any more but they’ll still make up a batch that way if you ask. I no longer remember what it means, but they’re damned good going down.

After dinner, I drove east to the Indiana-Ohio border. My plan was to stay the night just over the border in Montpelier, Ohio, a town I had picked off the map because it seemed like the right distance.

My wife travels a lot on business, so she has certain standards for a hotel, but when I’m traveling by myself I really don’t care about the amenities, especially when I’m driving, because the only time I’m in my hotel room is when I’m asleep. So I picked the cheapest hotel that had internet, which turned out to be a mom-and-pop motel called the Plaza Motel, which was actually a little down the road in Bryan.

I had told them I’d be a little late, and they promised they’d stay up for me, but I screwed up. I left the restaurant later than I planned to, then I got lost and went a few miles out of my way, so I was running a little late. Or so I thought. I had foolishly forgotten that in driving from Chicago to Ohio I would cross into a new timezone, so I arrived almost an hour and a half later than I’d told them.

The office was dark and shut down, so I was mentally preparing to decide whether to sleep in my car or look for another hotel. That latter was looking like it might be difficult since my iPhone had locked up and gone dark about 5 minutes before I got there. However, when I approached the office I discovered that someone was still waiting up for me, and she checked me in without yelling at me, which I thought was very nice of her.

My room was in what looked like a brand-new second building (or at least it was built more recently than the main building). When I got settled in, I tried to hop on the internet, but the wi-fi asked for a password, and I wasn’t about to bother the poor woman in the office again after making her stay up for me. I eventually figured out how to get my iPhone working again and tried to get on the internet, but it only had Edge service, which might have worked but I lacked the patience to try. I went to sleep.

The next day I woke up, got some breakfast, and took a long and uneventful drive across Ohio and most of Pennsylvania, following I-80 all the way. As evening approached, I estimated that I would be stopping near Scranton, and I asked my wife to find a hotel for me. She picked out a place called the Pocono Inne Town, which had a decent rate and sounded like a nice place to rest up after a long drive.

As it turns out, Stroudsburg is a bit of a college town, and the Pocono Inne Town was the party hotel located right in the middle of downtown Stroudsburg. I could hear a ruckus from the hotel bar while I was checking in, but my room on the fourth floor was quiet enough, although not really up to the standards of the Plaza Motel I had stayed in the night before.

It was a very old building with some odd features. For example, I travel with a lot of gear which I didn’t want to leave in the car, so after getting my key I loaded up a luggage cart in the lobby and took the elevator up to my floor and followed the directions to my room, only to discover that I couldn’t take the cart all the way because there were some stairs in the middle of the hallway.

The next morning I hit the road on the final leg of my outbound trip. The drive through the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania is very beautiful, but it’s hard to find places to pull over to take a picture. But knowing I’d be posting a travelogue, I decided I’d better stop at at least one “scenic overlook” to get a few pictures. This one was pretty decent:

And here’s a panoramic view:

(My gallery plugin doesn’t present that very well, so you might just want to look directly at the image in your browser here.)

I made it through the hills and tunnels into north Jersey in time for a late lunch at someplace called the Six Brothers Diner, which had some pretty decent food.

After that, it was one long trip down the Garden State Parkway to Avalon on the Jersey Shore, where I met up with my wife (she had come out earlier with friends). We had dinner that evening at the Princeton on Ocean drive. Here’s a shot I took looking out at the street.

More to come…

Update: I almost forgot. On my trip out east I stopped in to meet Jeff Gamso and his wife. Here’s a picture of Jeff with his puppydog, looking not too much like a badass capital defense lawyer.

Update: Part 2 is up.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Coastal Dash 2012 Travelogue – Part 1

It does look like I might make it a little further north than originally planned. I had been planning to reach New Jersey by crossing the Delaware river at Philadelphia, but now it looks like I’ll be driving to Newark and taking the Garden State Parkway down past Atlantic City to Avalon, if that makes any difference to anyone.

I used to do consulting that required the occasional trip to Picatinny Arsenal just outside of Rockaway, so I have some vague memories of the area.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Coastal Dash 2012 Update

The last time I made this trip, my wife and I met up with fellow blogger Mirriam and her great family outside of Washington. I haven’t made any specific plans yet, but if any of you are somewhere in that general area (the route on the map is just a rough guess) I think it might be fun to meet up. My wife and I will be on the move, but we’ll have to stop for food, drinks, taking pictures, sleep, and bathroom breaks. We might as well say “hi” while we’re at it.

Email me if you’re interested.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Second Annual Windypundit Coastal Dash

Yeah, that’s right. I flew. For the first time in about 11 years.

My lack of flying had nothing to do with 9/11. I’ve always disliked flying — getting through the airport traffic, all the walking around, all the standing in lines, the tedium of security — it grates at me. I can remember back in the late ’90’s or maybe 2000, I had flown out to D.C. for some meeting, and I was standing around waiting for something at Dulles, and I realized that I probably had another 30 years of waiting around in airports ahead of me. As it turned out, that was one of the last flights I ever took. I stopped working full time in 2001 and never had a reason to fly again.

Until now.

Air travel was pretty much how I remembered it, except that I arranged the whole trip myself online instead of having the company’s travel agent do it. And, of course, security was even slower. I didn’t have to go through the nudie-pic X-ray machine, but maybe that will change on the return trip. The truth is that it doesn’t bother me as much as you might think from reading this blog. (Besides, the punishment for taking nudie pictures of me is that you have to look at nudie pictures of me.)

Don’t get me wrong, I still hate the TSA. It’s kind of like when a clerk at a store swears in front of me. The swearing itself doesn’t bother me at all. However, he doesn’t know that. For all he knows, I might be easily offended by swearing, yet he goes ahead and swears anyway. He doesn’t respect me enough to care that I might be offended. And that offends me.

It’s the same with the TSA. I don’t mind so much that they intrude on my privacy, but I hate them for not giving a damn about my privacy. Someday, when the worm turns, I want them all to lose their jobs. Every smiling, friendly, blue-costumed asshole TSA agent in the country.

The weirdest part of security, though, was having to take off my shoes. I’d read about the TSA making people take off their shoes, of course, and knew intellectually that it was coming, but until I actually did it, I couldn’t quite believe something that stupid was for real.

When I got to Baltimore, I had a little trouble finding the offices where we were meeting. The rental car GPS had never heard of those streets. I used my phone’s Maps app to find a nearby intersection, and the GPS knew about it, but it tried to take me there via Fort Meade, home of the NSA. I managed to turn around before running into checkpoints full of armed guards.

Anyway, the meeting went well, and then a few of us went out to dinner. One of the guys had heard about a resturant called Maiwand Kabob in Columbia, and we decided to try it. The GPS got us there safely, and it turned out to be a tiny little store-front middle eastern restaurant in a mall. I decided to order the beef-and-chicken kabob, and when one of the other guys ordered that, I said, “I’ll have the same thing.”

I’d misheard, however. He’d actually ordered the lamb-and-chicken kabob. I don’t generally like lamb, but I went ahead with it anyway, which turned out to be a good idea. Apparently, I don’t like lamb because I’ve never had it prepared properly. If you ever find yourself in the area with a taste for middle eastern food, you could do a lot worse than Maiwand Kabob.

Anyway, I’m just about to pack up and head for the airport. My flight isn’t for 4 hours, but I’d rather get there early. The only thing worse than waiting around in an airports is rushing through airports.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Maryland Revisited

Step one was getting out of New Jersey, which proved a little tricky. There are several bridges across the Delaware from south Jersey, and our GPS system wanted to take the southern-most bridge, the Delaware Memorial, presumably because it was closest to our starting point in Avalon. But we were reliably informed that traffic on the small roads between Avalon and the bridge would be very congested, and that we should take one of the northern bridges, possibly even the Ben Franklin into Philadelphia. Even though we’d have to travel in the wrong direction, it was supposed to be much quicker.

So I decided to ignore Jill (the GPS) for a little while and cruise north along the Garden State Parkway until Jill stopped advising me to turn around, at which point I could assume that it had chosen a more northern route. This took us close to Atlantic City, at which point we switched to the Atlantic City Expressway heading west toward the Ben Franklin bridge.

It all went wrong when I followed Jill’s instructions to take an exit onto some small roads. I should have balked, but I needed gas anyway, so I decide to see where Jill would take us. After maybe 15 minutes of driving on silly little streets — definitely not a major route for driving to D.C., although I did get gas — we got on the southbound New Jersey Turnpike — and promptly proceeded down to the Delaware Memorial bridge anyway. By the time I figured out what Jill had done, it was a little too late to change directions. Except for the silly little streets, it may have been faster than the more direct route — there was very little traffic — but it was not what I had been planning.

As for Delaware, all I know is that we were in a traffic jam. Then we left Delaware and everything got better. I realize this is probably not a representative sample of life in Delaware.

We crossed Maryland without incident — not even in Baltimore — entered Virginia, and headed for the western burbs of D.C., where we met up Mirriam Seddiq. I’ve known her for years through her blog, where I followed her job-hunting and the birth of her children and the re-launch of her legal career, so I wasn’t about to pass this close without taking the opportunity to meet her in person.

My wife and I didn’t want to intrude, so our plan had been to call her when we got close and meet her for late lunch or early dinner somewhere in her neighborhood. Mirriam, however, insisted on inviting us over, so we got to meet her whole lovely family.

Larger ImageMirriam, Yakob, Drue, and Yonas a.k.a. Stick Kid

Afterwards, we got out of D.C. and dashed southwest a few hours to get a headstart on the next day’s travels. I had been hoping to take Skyline Drive for the view, but we were running a bit late and the sun was almost down, so we just drove down Interstate 81 to Lexington. It went pretty fast, and I had ripped about 80 more of my CDs before leaving home, so we had some music. At one point we were listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and I couldn’t help reinacting the headbanging scene from Wayne’s World, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do while driving 70 miles per hour down a unfamiliar two-lane undulating mountain road at night, surrounded by trucks, in the rain, and fog.

The next morning, I decided to add some scenic driving to our trip — unaware that Jill would later add some scenery of her own — by taking Virginia-39 northwest to Warm Springs. I had noticed that there weren’t a lot of photos along the route on Google Earth, so I thought I might be able to contribute a few, but the road was narrow and had no shoulders for stopping. I would have had to either stop right on the road or find a place to park and walk back. I didn’t want to risk the first, and we didn’t have time for the latter. I did get pictures from a lookout, but since everyone does that, Google Earth doesn’t need another one.

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As we were leaving, another guy was also leaving, and he was driving what looked like some kind of Mazda coupe (Miata maybe?). I figured that having my comparatively ungainly RAV4 in front of him would ruin his fun drive through the hills, so I let him go ahead of me. This turned out to be a mistake. He proceeded to amble along comfortably below the speed limit for the next 3 or 4 miles. Then he slowed down even more to look for the right turnoff.

People, please: If you want a slow, relaxed drive, buy a big sedan. If you’re going to buy a nimble little coup, learn to drive it like the sports car that it is. If I can keep up on a mountain road in my SUV, you’re not doing it right.

Anyway, once we reached Warm Springs I decided to get off the scenic route. I wanted Jill to find a route back to the main road, but the GPS system didn’t really have a routing mode for that, so I improvised by asking it to find all the nearest fast food places, and I picked a McDonald’s in cluster of them to the southwest of us, which pretty much had to be on the highway.

That worked, but Jill found some hilariously tiny and windy roads for the trip. I guess that even though they are built like a roller coaster ride, with steep banking and sharp blind turns, they’re rural roads, and therefore the default speed limit is 55mph. I guess that looks pretty attractive to the GPS system’s routing algorithms.

When we reached Beckley, West Virginia, the GPS system took us northwest along the West Virgina Turnpike, and then southeast toward our destination in Prestonsburg. It should have been simple — there were state roads all over the place — but when the GPS system took us off the Turnpike, it once again took us on a tour of twisty little roads that had ridulously high speed limits.

The lesson, I think, is that GPS routing doesn’t replace good old map reading. In the future, I’ll use a good road map to plan the basic route, then I’ll plug a series of waypoints into the GPS system to let it handle the finer details and deal with problems like finding my way back to the highway after a stop for gas.

We eventually got to our hotel, checked in, and drove the 25 miles or so to Pikeville. We had been hoping to stay in Pikeville itself, but Pikeville is no longer the tiny little town I remember visiting as a child. It’s turned into a sort-of Eastern Kentucky Enterprise Zone, with chain restaurants, a Walmart, and outposts for large corporations. We found out that all their hotels were filled up for weeks in advance.

We were in Pikeville to take my Uncle Hagan out to dinner. He was my father’s younger brother, and out of a total of ten brothers and sisters, he’s the only one still alive. That pretty much makes him the Draughn family patriarch. Which is probably why he ended up taking us out to dinner.

Hagan’s kind of an amazing and inspirational guy. His wonderful wife, Mary Lou, passed away about ten years ago, and despite having gone blind, he still lives by himself in a beautiful home on a hillside just a few miles outside Pikeville proper. He worked hard to learn the skills that allow him to take care of himself, and he keeps himself fit with a daily exercise regimen. He had no trouble giving me driving directions to the restaurant.

(Hagan’s son Jim and his wife Peggy were away at the time, but they have a home on another part of the hill, so Hagan’s not without family support. Hagan visits them all the time, finding his own way along the path through the woods.)

The next day, we loaded up the RAV and set out for Louisville.

I should mention that my wife and I had a ridiculous amount of luggage for two people on a short driving trip. We had initially traveled separately, so we each brought along a suitcase full of clothing, a computer, and a utility bag. In addition, I had my camera gear, and we brought along a small cooler filled with Diet Coke. We needed to use a luggage cart at every hotel.

The trip to Louisville was uneventful, until we checked into the hotel and found out the wi-fi service sucked. This was a problem because my wife had to give a training webinar of some kind. She ended up having to use her phone’s tethering capability, which was a little slow for screen sharing, and she had to use my phone to call in.

On the other hand, when we were on the road, my wife was able to get an amazing amount of work done while I was driving. It got a bit spotty in the hills — email would come in bursts as we passed through islands of 3G service — but we were pretty much always in touch with the world.

That evening, we took my cousin Betty out to dinner. She had a lot of great stories. She’d known my father long ago, and she’d spent a lot of time with my Aunt Mary Elizabeth, who passed away last year. Mary had always gone to great lengths to appear prim and proper — because she was prim and proper — whereas Betty was a bit more willing to speak her mind and tell people off.

Mary Elizabeth enjoyed playing Bridge, and she apparently played a lot with a fairly elite group. Toward the end, her mind was letting go a bit, and she’d get confused. One day, someone from the group called Betty to complain that Mary’s mental difficulties were making the game less fun for the rest of them or something. I don’t know what she wanted Betty to do about it, and neither does Betty, because she hung up before they finished their whining. I’m proud to have Betty as family.

The next day, we GTFO of Louisville. Really, our hotel was almost on the Ohio river, about three miles from the nearest bridge. We were gone in minutes. And thus we started the last and most boring leg of our journey: Driving across Indiana.

Indiana’s not a bad place, but compared to the states I had been driving across, it was really, really flat. And I’ve been up and down I-65 a bunch of times, so there wasn’t a lot to see. We got home on Wednesday, and I’ve been recovering ever since.

Normally, I would have more photos for a trip like this, but (1) it was hard to find a good place to stop for some of the photos, (2) we were in a bit of a hurry, and (3) I seemed to have lost the ability to get a properly exposed photograph. First the photo would be too dark, then I’d adjust something and the highlights would be all blown out. After a while, I got discouraged and stopped taking pictures.

Embarassingly, the problem turned out to be that I had done a few high-dynamic-range photos earlier and had left the camera in bracket mode, so it was alternately under- and overexposing my shots. It wasn’t until several days later that I noticed the bracket indicator on the LCD display, and suddenly I was able to take decent photos again.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at The Road to Chicago

I wanted to leave on Thursday morning, but a couple of things came up, so I didn’t hit the road until around 1 pm, a bit later than I had planned. As most eastbound trips must, this one began with killer Chicago traffic, followed by a stop at the Gas-A-Roo in Hammond, Indiana to fill up with that cheap, cheap non-Chicago fuel.

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Then, eastward.

Indiana is pretty normal. I’ve been there before and it’s no big deal. I was just going to see more of it this time. I’ve got an Illinois I-Pass transponder for tolls, and it also works in Indiana. At some point, I took a break and used my iPhone to find the tollway website, to see if it would work in any of the other states. As it turns out, Illinois I-Pass is the same as E-ZPass, so it works in a few other states, including all the ones I’d be passing through in the outbound leg of my trip.

Ohio was next, and boy is it a boring state. Actually, for all I know, it’s an interesting place, but I was driving the Ohio Turnpike, so I didn’t see any of it. Just mile after mile of boring highway. The Ohio Turnpike is a depressing thing. It’s a limited access tollway, so the only places you can stop at along the way are the tollway rest stops, which are pretty dreary and all the same. Actually, they’re not quite the same. The rest stops are being upgraded, so there are two types: Obviously old and dreary, or brand new and less obviously dreary.

This dreariness has a well-known economic cause: Monopoly power.The restaurants, stores, and gas stations in the rest stops are the only places you can get to without the annoyance of leaving and reentering, so they have a bit of monopoly pricing power. As is usually the case, not only do they raise prices, they also reduce the quality and variety of goods and services.

For example, I’ve always mapped out my driving routes before taking them, but on this part of the trip, I hadn’t bothered. For the first time ever, I was relying solely on Jill for navigation. (“Jill” is what we call our GPS, because the English language speech files for our Nuvi are named Jack and Jill.)

The problem with using Jill for guidance, I discovered, is that once I got a few hundred miles from home, I was basically just the monkey that drove the car. I had no locational awareness. (At one point, I pulled up a tiny map on my iPhone and was surpised to see that I was skirting the southern shore of Lake Erie and I didn’t even know it.) So I decided to stop and pick up one of those 50-state road atlases that I used to use to plan all my trips.

It turns out they don’t sell those on the Turnpike. Monopoly power means they don’t have to. I was thinking of driving over to the other side of the rest stop and asking the truckers if they know where I could find a proper truck stop. A good truckstop has an awesome variety of driving supplies — everything you could need for living a life on the road.

Anyway, it was getting dark as I passed Cleveland, so I stopped at the Brady’s Leap rest stop just before Youngstown to figure out where I was going to get a room for the night. I tend to stay up kind of late, and I didn’t want to spend three or four hours staring at the hotel room walls when I could still have been driving.

I decided I could make it into Pennslvania. That’s a turnpike too, so it looked like I had only a handful of places I could get off and look for a hotel. Between Kayak and advertising in the rest stops I found a few candidates, but and I couldn’t make up my mind where I was going to stop, so I decided to postpone the decision.

The drive through Youngstown, Ohio was slightly interesting, because somehow Jill got me off the Turnpike. I swear I stayed to the side I was told to stay on, but somehow that got me onto I-680 through town. After that, it was just boring highway all the way to the border.

Pennsylvania was only a little different, mostly because of the mountains, which I couldn’t see at night anyway. It was another boring turnpike. I stopped at the first reststop to figure out my plan for the night. (By the way, the rest stop had Wi-Fi, but they wanted you to pay to use it. Monopoly power again.) Based on the hotel ads, it looked like I could stop at either Irwin, New Stanton, or Somerset. I decided I could make it all the way to Somerset, which looked like it had a lot of hotels.

Unfortunately for me, it also had a lot of motorcyclists for Thunder in the Valley. When I got off the turnpike at 2am and started calling hotels, they were almost all booked up. The Days Inn had a smoking room for $70, and the Super 8 had a Jacuzzi room for $90. I went with the Jacuzzi, but when I got there, the guy offered to let me have the room for $50 if I didn’t use it. I took the deal. I was only going to sleep.

On Friday morning I woke up, checked out, had breakfast, and drove through the mountains of Pennsylvania, which were more interesting in daylight. Also, there were tunnels through some of the mountains, which are an unusual experience for me, being from Illinois, where we don’t really have geography.

(I wonder why they don’t allow lane changes in the tunnels. I guess lane changes must be a cause of accidents, which would be an awful mess and block traffic for a really long time.)

The rest of the drive through Pennsylvania was weaving through mountain valley after mountain valley. I found it relaxing and pleasant, but there’s not a lot to write about. And I never got that road atlas, so I still have no sense of where I’ve been

I had to meet some people at 4:30, and I was on track to be at least an hour early until I crossed the Delaware river into New Jersey. At which point the traffic began to suck. I reached my destination in Avalon at about 4:40, which was close enough that I still got to join everybody for dinner at Sylvesters. Later that night, I took camera and tripod to the beach for some long exposures as the sun went down, although I did something wrong because they came out too dark.

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I started to blog all this last night, but I got too tired to finish. I’ll stay here until Sunday morning, and then I’m headed to Pikeville, Kentucky by way of D.C. and whatever scenic routes I can find in Virginia.

Update: The return trip.

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at The Road to Avalon

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Some friends of ours have rented a house up at Powers Lake in Wisconsin for a month and they invited us to spend some time with them.

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Mostly, we sat around doing nothing, but I did get to take a few pictures of people on the lake, including this pair of photos taken 3 seconds apart:

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All in all, it was a relaxing time.

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This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Powers Lake

Larger ImageCheese

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This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Beyond the Cheddar Curtain

This post by Mark Draughn at Windypundit was originally published at Nebraska Blogging