Vacation

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.

Cattle Abduction

Day 9 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Albuquerque, NM to Albuquerque, NM. Lots of geocaching today. We drove a few miles north of the city center to the Alameda Open Space Parking Area to walk a loop around both sides of the Rio Grande River on the Paseo del Bosque Trail. We walked 4-1/3 miles, found a dozen caches and DNF’d just two.

After that we headed back to the east side of town to drive NM14 north back to Madrid for lunch. When we were in the Jezebel Soda Fountain yesterday eating some ice cream the discussion turned to gelato and burritos. They sounded so tempting that we vowed to come back for a breakfast burrito that they serve all day. It is so large that is easily splitable, but because this was going to be our lunch & dinner meal for the day, we each got our own. Mine with the green chilies and Donna’s without. There are a few places to eat in this funky little town and this is the only one we have eaten at, but so far we see no need to try another.

On the way up to Madrid Donna asked, “Did you see that cattle crossing sign? It had a UFO on it above the cow silhouette.” “Nope,” I replied, then I asked, “Go back?” “Yes,” she said. The picture above is evidence that they do exist. Click on the big photo and get a close-up of the sign. Not only is there a little UFO silhouette on above the cow, but there is a small doll eye glued where a cow would have an eye. As we continued on, it seemed like all the cattle crossing signs had been modified. Most all of the signs were pairs back to back on a post, so a sign faced both directions, but only the sign that was facing northbound traffic had been doctored. Funny we never noticed them yesterday…

On the way back to the hotel I took a second pass at the musical road on NM333/Rte66 between Tijeras and Albuquerque. This time, unlike yesterday, I actually got a couple of seconds worth of recognizable music.

VRBO

A niece is getting married in Lake Tahoe in May and instead of flying out, attending the thing and then flying back we are going to make a long vacation of it. We are going to drive out, spend a week at Lake Tahoe and then drive back. Instead of staying at the Holiday Inn Express for $200 a night or $125 for the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino we thought we’d rent a house or a condo for something in between to have the ability to cook our own meals, etc.

When we found out Donna’s youngest brother was coming down with his wife and kids we thought maybe we’d get a big house that we can all share. They were agreeable to this idea so we went looking for places that had at least 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms. We started with VRBO because that had worked out so well when we rented a cabin on a lake near them in 2015.

We found a nice place in a condo development less than 2 miles away from the wedding venues and requested a booking. We had to give VRBO our charge card number to get the process going and they got their $130 fee right then (refunded if the owner doesn’t confirm the reservation within 24 hours) while the rest of the total would be going to the owner once confirmed. Not long after that the owner wrote back and asked a couple questions, we swapped a few emails and then waited for the next step. And waited. We started to worry.

At about hour 28 the owner emailed us and said although she felt she responded to VRBO within the proper time frame, they did not and we would have to cancel and rebook. The VRBO’s $130 was already listed as pending on the charge card, so I called the VRBO customer support line to make sure that that charge wouldn’t go through because I had cancelled the reservations. I was assured it would not. So, we started the booking process all over again. This time when filling out the request, VRBO’s cut was listed as $129. Why the dollar difference?

This time we didn’t get anything right back from the owner. After 12 hours we emailed the owner. She apologized for the delay saying she is under the weather with the flu, we were all set. Donna and I were under the impression that when we agreed to payment terms and gave VRBO our charge card information that was all we needed to do. But according to her (and the rental’s VRBO page, which we didn’t notice) we pay everything except the $130 booking fee to her. We needed to sign some documents and she would send us an invoice over the weekend. It was now Friday afternoon, so we waited.

And waited. By Sunday approaching bedtime we had still not heard anything. After eighteen total emails between us, VRBO & the owner and 2 separate $130 charges pending we were not feeling comfortable about the process anymore, so we decided to cancel the reservation and start over with a different rental place. I went online to the VRBO site to fill out the form. Using up all but 18 of the allowed 1,000 characters I wrote this, and retired for the night:

We have been trying to book this property since January 9th. The first attempt (Reservation #HA-VZ80Y8) fell through because the owner told us she must have missed the payment deadline and we would have to cancel the reservation and try again, which we did on the 11th. I tried to re-book on the night of the 11th, but my credit card wouldn’t work online. I then spent 15 minutes with one of your Customer Service Reps on the phone trying to use it through her and it wouldn’t work then either. The CSR said you were having problems with a software update. The following day, the 12th, I successfully booked online with a charge card. The owner informed us that she would be send us payment information via email and documents. We have yet to receive anything else from the owner. We are now quite skeptical of this process and would like to cancel our reservation. Please refund the both the $130 for the 1st & the $129 for the 2nd reservations. Thank you, Donna and Brian Bogardus

VRBO had asked for a reason for the cancellation, not finding anything right on point, I picked something that was as close to how we were feeling about the process – Traveler’s reason: I ran into suspicious activity. So, when we got up on Monday morning, there was our cancellation confirmation email from VRBO timed about a minute after I entered it. And 5 minutes later than that an email from the owner who took umbrage at the suspicious activity reason. “She had been in business or 9 years and never had any problems…yadda, yadda, yadda.” Didn’t take her over 48 hours to respond to that though, did it?

Monday night we found a 3 bedroom, 2-1/2 bath place about $50 a night cheaper on Airbnb. Booked it and within an hour we heard back from both Airbnb and the owner confirming our reservation. Done.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig

Today was our shortest day on the road, we were home by 10:30 in the morning. We took just one picture, Roadside Oddity for 1 point, and that was while we were still in Hendersonville before we even started home. All told we took 23 pictures worth 31 points which brings us to 189 total. We have a possible 68 points left on the table. The big hitters are the vehicles from 1900-1909 worth 10 points, and a vehicle from 1910 -1919 is worth 7 and a rainbow is worth 4. there are four goals worth 3 points, five more worth 2 points and twenty-five goals worth just 1 point.

In the seven days we traveled 1645 miles. We filled up with gas 7 times averaging $3.12 a gallon with the lowest being $2.90 in Newport News, VA and the highest being $3.24 in Hendersonville, NC. Average MPG for the trip was nearly thirty miles to the gallon at 29.93.

Blue Park Ridgeway


Today was our longest drive with a total of over 300 miles covered. It was our longest in total time also because the last third of it was on the Blue Ridge Parkway where the top speed is only 45 MPH. The first third was a straight shot down I-81. The middle 1/3 was spent on lovely rural, and mostly empty, two lane VA & NC roads.

Three points in the Motoring Challenge today, 1 for Switzerland, 1 for Blue Ridge Mountains and 1 more for the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, Mount Mitchell.

Oh, yeah, today was our 41st wedding aniversary, so we had a special dinner of microwavable chimichangas and hot pockets in the hotel room.

57,000 Something or Others

This picture was taken on US-15 outside Dillwyn, VA. In the 2014 Moss Motoring Challenge this would have been worth 2 points for Bonus #2, it wouldn’t have been worth 3 points in 2015 or 2016 as a Moss Motors Facility (there are only two official ones) and this year it might be worth one point only if I call it a “Roadside Oddity.” Not long before we took this photo the CTBNL crossed the 57,000 mile mark.

The only real points today were 1 for Stonewall Jackson in the Heroes and Villains category and 2 points for 8% (or greater) grade in the Destinations category.

Giant Human Creations

On this trip we planned to stop in Wilmington, NC so we could take a picture of the battleship U.S.S. North Carolina to use in the category of Giant Human Creations. Well if we had done a little research, we would have discovered the the ship was undergoing repairs to its hull in a dry dock right there on the Cape Fear River. Because of the work it was moved closer to the pier and inside a coffer dam making it partially hidden from view from shore. Also especially unhelpful was the half flooded parking area left over from hurricane Irma. So we missed out on the battleship.

We thought we were going to get a make-up opportunity in Newport News, VA this morning when we found a little tidbit in the throw away touristy magazine in our hotel room. An aircraft carrier was undergoing overhaul at the shipyard and is visible from Victory Landing Park. We could see part of the ship from the road in front of the shipyard, but as we got there you couldn’t see anything of the ship unless you were in the park itself. Trouble with that was the park is a walk-in place and Miatas, while probably small enough to drive on the walkways, that would probably be highly frowned on. So we missed out on the carrier.

We didn’t miss out on the supermarket right across the street from tonight’s hotel in Lexinton Park, Maryland. And while this morning’s trip down near the Newport News Shipyard didn’t net a giant human creation, it wasn’t a total loss because on display outside the yard is the very first ship they built, the tugboat Dorothy. A tugboat is worth two points in the Destinations category. We also scored 5 points for capturing a place of personal significance to us. Donna and I first met on the Patuxent River Naval Air station a little over 42 years ago. They don’t allow us mere civilians on base, so we stopped in and visited the museum just outside the gate.