Road Trip

Sneaky

We are in Hendersonville, NC for the next couple nights. My sister and her husband are visiting the area and seeing as this is closer than Connecticut we always try and meet them when they are here. For years they have been telling us that when Allen hits 55 he is going to retire early and move here.

Tonight while on a drive north of town they asked if we minded visiting a development where there are some nice home lots that they we thinking of buying in, we said sure. We drove up to near the highest point in the place and looked around. It was about 500 feet higher than the main road and the views were great. There were a couple/three lots still open, one had a for sale by developer sign, one had a for sale by a realtor sign and one didn’t have any sign except for what looked like a buried cable marker. All of them looked like a nice spot to put a home.

After we got back to the hotel my sister told us that the one without a for sale sign was theirs. They had bought it a couple years ago and wanted to get an unbiased opinion from us.

Sneaky.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, went back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 207

Vacation Photo Outtake III

Tinkertown Museum in Sandia Park, NM.

Admission to this piece of Roadside Americana is three bucks and then they give you a quarter back so you can listen to this band welcome you.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 200

Vacation Photo Outtake 2

Dino – In front of Flintstones Bedrock City in Custer, SD.

I wish I had taken a few more pictures of this place, but it looked a little rundown (sort of like nothing had been done to it since its heyday in the early 70’s) and neither Donna nor I felt comfortable parked in the empty lot out front, we didn’t even want to go in the Gift Shop which looked open.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 190

Vacation Photo Outtake

Fourd Seasons – a car sculpture next to Carhenge in Alliance, NE.

I have posted my vacation photos online, both here and on Flickr. Right now there are titles and no captions, so it is sort of like watching TV with it on mute, you can get the gist of it, but not the full effect. Come back in a week or so…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 188

Going Paperless

Didn’t have time to work up a post tonight because I’m busy playing with my new toy, a HP iPAQ HX2495b. We borrowed a PDA to use on vacation for paperless geocaching and liked it so much that I bought on off fleabay. I got one with the bigger battery, so it should be interesting to see how long it will run compared to the borrowed unit. It didn’t come with a stylus (through oversight or on purpose by the seller), so right now I’m using a q-tip with the fuzz cut off to navigate around. I wrote the seller and we’ll see if he drops one in the mail or I have to buy one.

I also started weeding out some of the 551 pictures we took on vacation to get it down to some sort of managable level for posting online here and sharing with friends and coworkers (without boring them too much more than it already will just by its mention.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176

Aiken, SC

0 miles from home.

Easy flight back, we started to get some heavy turbulence somewhere over middle America, so the pilot got clearance to fly at a higher altitude. When we got up there, there must have been a better tailwind because we spent only 2:55 in the air as opposed to the scheduled 3-1/2 hours.

We used that extra thirty-five minutes to catch 3 quick caches on the way home, 2 in Fort Mill and another in Blythewood. There were still a couple left on the GPSr to do, but we could only put off the inevitable so long, we came straight home from number three.

Sorry for the Travel Bug follow the route link yesterday, didn’t realize you had to be a member and log in to see the map. So here is an image you can see – take a look.

The first things we did when we got here was for Donna to mow the weeds in both the front and back yard while I blew the piles of oak pollen clusters off the deck and the driveway. Then the Emperor got a much needed bath. The poor boy spend the last 2 weeks parked outside the Charlotte Airport Holiday Inn and there was a nice layer of baked on pine pollen on all his horizontal surfaces.

Tomorrow it is back to reality.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176

Denver, CO

1344 miles from home.

That is the hotel across the street from where we are staying taken from our 6th floor room. We did some laundry, watched some TV and relaxed a lot, but we did also get out today and do some geocaching within a 10 mile radius of the hotel. We found seven of eight caches and probably would have found all of them, but it was a cloudy, chilly day and our hearts just weren’t into it. This brought our total for the vacation to 48 found, 7 missed (although that may rise as we plan on trying a couple on the way home from the airport tomorrow.

To streamline tomorrow morning’s early flight process we turned in the rental car this afternoon. Total mileage driven in the slightly more than 14 days in our possession was 3,593 or an average of 256 miles a day. Which seems sort of poetic as the total bill for all those miles was $256.

I didn’t log the Rental Car Travel Bug into all the caches we found but try and get enough so you could get an outline of the trip. See the map for a look.

Of the sixteen nights on the road there were 6 spent in Bed & Breakfasts, the rest were various hotels. Three of those were HIE (mmm…cinnamon buns), 2 plain Holiday Inns, these two in a Courtyard and then some other random chains.

Vacations are great, but we are ready to be getting home (not necessarily to go back to work.) We had lunch before the last couple of caches today and are now so tired of eating out that we decided to go to some place really different, McDonald’s. Almost looking forward to making a meal out of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.