Is This The Straw?

Last year when we went to visit family in Washington state Donna came back from the trip determined that we should move out there. She even had a town all picked out, Sequim (pronounced skwim), it is out on the Olympic Peninsula which is close enough, but far enough from little Scott and family. It is small town, only 6,600 people, so we wouldn’t have the selection of restaurants or shops to choose from we do here. The temperature ranges are similar to Aiken and they actually get less total rain than here, but it is cloudy for twice as many days as Aiken with only 130 predominantly sunny days a year.

This year when we went to visit family out west Donna came back from the trip determined that we should move out there. She even had a town all picked out, Carson City, NV. The temperature is generally cooler year round as it is high desert at 4,100′ above sea level. It is a lot colder in the winter though with an average of 17″ of snow a year. It is a bigger town than Aiken with a population of about 50k, so there is that, but real estate is a bit more expensive, we’d end up with less house.

After a few weeks the fever to move wanes because it would be a monumental hassle, with trying to sell a house, move everything we own, including two cars 3,000 miles away, buy another house, pick out a new set of banks, doctors, insurance agents, etc. Besides we do generally like it here.

The photo above is of the closed Ridgecrest Coffee Bar. We drove by there the other day and were devastated to find that while we were gone this time the place closed. According to the sign on the door the owner was having legal issues from a previous location and landlord troubles at this location, so she pulled the plug. We have taken an early morning bike ride and ended up here for breakfast for nearly every Sunday for the last 4 years.

We have a backup plan for Sunday mornings, Dunkin Donuts1, but anything available there pales in comparison to the the breakfast panini we know and love, plus the bike riding out that way is not as nice. This loss may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and gets us to move out west somewhere.

Fun with Figures

Day 2 of Not Being on our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

We were gone for 31 days and of those, 20 were spent driving from one place to another. There was a day in west Texas visiting Donna’s brother, a couple days in Albuquerque, seven days in Lake Tahoe and another day in Louisiana visiting a friend. We filled up with gas 18 times and used a total of 190 gallons for the 7,291 mile trip for an average of 38.4 miles per gallon.

The Mini uses premium fuel and I never really shopped around so take these numbers for what they are worth. The cheapest gas (besides the original fill up at home) was in Pelham, AL at $2.95 a gallon. The next cheapest was in Albuquerque, NM at $2.96. The highest was in Reno, NV at $3.72 a gallon and the second highest was also in Nevada in West Wendover at $3.63. For the trip we averaged $3.21 a gallon and spent a grand total of $677.05 on fuel.

Like I did 9 years ago with a rental car when we went out west, I attached a static cling travel bug to the back of the Lady Bug for our drive to and from the west, And just like that one no one spotted it on the car and logged it. I dipped it in about half of the geocaches we did along the way to rack up some miles anyway. Because the mileage for travel bugs is tallied in a “as the crow flies” manner between caches it only totaled only 4,834 miles compared to the 7,291 the car itself traveled.

We geocached for 17 of the 31 days on the trip. We looked for 70 caches. We found 63 and DNF’d seven for a success rate of 90%. Our biggest day was finding 12 caches, missing 2, on a Tuesday in Albuquerque2 while walking along some trails near the Rio Grande River. We found the most, 23, in surprise, Texas the state we spent the most time in. We found the fewest in Louisiana, just one on the way back thru and by grabbing 15 caches in Nevada we added another state cached in to bring our total to 30.

Home Again Home Again Jiggity-Jig

Day 31 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Montgomery, AL to Aiken, SC. This is all the stuff we carried with us on the trip.

  1. My clothes
  2. Donna’s clothes
  3. Our dress-up clothes for the wedding (dry cleaned and pressed on arrival)
  4. Donna’s hiking boots and casual shoes
  5. My hiking boots and sneakers
  6. Bathroom items (including our Water-Pik)
  7. Our favorite soft drinks and snacks
  8. Kitchen items (paper towels, plastic mugs, etc.)
  9. Three days worth of dirty clothes (which is why #1 & #2 aren’t bulging)
  10. Laptop bag
  11. Soft-sided cooler with ice packs for cooling the day’s drinks and snacks
  12. Geocaching knapsack
  13. Hiking sticks

The Mini’s back seats were folded down and the three black bags (1,2,3), the laptop bag (10) and the soft-sided cooler (11) were on top of them, the rest of the items were strategically crammed into the “trunk area” behind the seats and under the cover. About 90% of this stuff made the trip into the hotel room each night. We used a cart to haul it all up in the evening, then usually made two trips down each morning to load the car back up.

Penultimate Day Drive

Day 30 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Hammond, LA to Montgomery, AL. No geocaching or sightseeing today because of the weather and probably none for tomorrow either as we will be anxious to just get back home.

When we got up in Hammond in the morning I checked the radar and I could see the rain bands still circling around the center of Alberto with the bottom of them around Montgomery. The sky was threatening all day, but it hardly sprinkled on the drive here and it is yet to rain, but from the looks of the sky as we walked back to the hotel after dinner it might pour at any minute.

It finally did rain and rain hard for about 2 hours just around sunset. Thunder and lightning included, but I think Alberto is too far north to mess with us anymore. If we run into any precipitation on the way home tomorrow it will be of the usual heat and humidity fueled summer afternoon variety.

Mandeville Morning

Day 29 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Hammond, LA. We are staying at a Holiday Inn here, not an Express, so no free breakfast, but when we checked in they gave us a voucher worth $20 towards breakfast at the in-house restaurant. Due to past experiences at Holiday Inn hotel restaurants we didn’t take advantage of it on the first morning, but for some reason we thought it might be worth a try today. If it wasn’t that good there was nothing ventured as it would be free. There was a buffet, but we thought we should order off the menu to make sure we got something fresh. Donna ordered her go to, Eggs Benedict, I just ordered scrambled eggs, hash browns and sausage. We should have known better.

It seemed to take an awful long time for the food to arrive. When it did arrive and the waitress put the plates down in front of us, mine looked fine, but Donna’s looked weird. The hollandaise sauce was a dark orange color and the ham slices were a 1/2″ thick. She took one taste of the sauce and it was awful. I dipped my fork in it and confirmed her opinion. It was inedible. She called the waitress back and told her that the food was disgusting. Waitress apologized, the manager visited and he apologized and Donna ended up just eating from the buffet. My scrambled eggs were fine and the sausage was half decent, but my hash browns looked exactly like hers (that came off the buffet) and my toast was at best, warm. We can now guarantee that this was the absolute last time we will ever eat at a Holiday Inn restaurant ever.

After eating we took another early morning drive over to Mandeville. Not for beignets this time, but for a nice walk along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The temperature was in the 70’s, there was a slight breeze off the lake, hardly a cloud in the sky and you could see the causeway stretching to the horizon. On the way back to Hammond we did get a good breakfast. Donna got a chocolate covered chocolate cake doughnut and I had glazed cinnamon twist from Dat’s Us Deaux-Nuts in Ponchatoula.

Let’s Stay an Extra Day

Day 28 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Hammond, LA. Our original intent was to be on the road home tomorrow, but our travel vector and the vector of TS Alberto would have collided in our Monday overnight town of Montgomery, Alabama about the time we would be getting on the road Tuesday morning, so we have opted to stay another day.

Donna wanted some beignets from Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter for breakfast today, but I refused to drive into New Orleans. We compromised by visiting one of their other locations in Mandeville which is a lot closer and still on this side of the lake. We also spent some of the day catching up with our woman in the State Department, Donna’s childhood friend, and her mom the nonagenarian.

Where The Locals Eat

Day 27 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Minden, LA to Hammond, LA. Last night’s hotel clerk recommendation for a good breakfast where the locals eat was to drive just up the street a bit and go to Hamburger Happiness and Southern Maid Doughnuts. We were worried a bit as there was only one other vehicle in the lot when we pulled in.

The one guy sitting by himself didn’t seem too friendly, but the nice old lady at the counter where we placed and paid for our order was very pleasant. I think it was literally a mom and pop shop because I could see an old man through the saloon doors to the kitchen.

Soon the rest of the locals started arriving one by one and they greeted each other by name. The same lady brought our food to us pipping hot and it was delicious. The portions were correct and the price was right. We could hear the locals in background discussing the weather and the size of farm tractors. When we finished up and stepped outside I knew I needed to snap a picture. Take a guess, which one of these things is not like the other.