Ahhhhh.....it feels SO GOOD not to be driving right now. I'm blogging to you from a very nice hotel suite in Clearwater, FL and let me tell you, this whole family has earned this vacation. A brief recap:
We left El Paso a little later than we'd hoped on Tuesday. I had wanted to make it to Ft. Worth, but by 9:30 pm we were still over an hour away. We stopped in Eastlake, TX and decided we'd get up really early the next morning to make up time. I have no idea how I got up every morning at 5 am all those years when I was in the Army. It was physically painful for me to be awake so early, but we pushed on and made it to just west of Nashville on Wednesday.
Thursday was crazy. We drove to my mom's property north of Knoxville, where my dad met us. My dad & DH loaded up a tractor and a bunch of other equipment that we needed to get off of mom's property. I left Alex with those guys and Grace and I turned around and drove back to Nashville. The guys then took all the stuff down to my dad's property about 6 hours away. Grace and I had a day to kill while they dealt with all that, so we hung around Nashville and shopped and relaxed.
While there, we went to the Haus of Yarn. If you are in Nashville, don't miss this yarn shop. It was packed with so much delightful yarn and tons and tons of knitted up samples! I loved seeing and touching all the projects. I knew I couldn't buy toooo much, but I couldn't resist some Zauerball sock yarn because hey, it's already in a ball rather a skein, so that is very practical for traveling. I also picked up some Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace yarn. I had just looked at the new Knitty that morning and that's the yarn used for this shawl, Cold Mountain.
I loved Nashville. DH and I are considering someday maybe retiring in that area. Right now that seems so far off, but I was glad to drive around the city and enjoy it. Saturday morning was another early one as Grace and I drove down to Florida. We stopped and picked up the guys in Gainesville, then kept going down to Clearwater.
After 4 long, long days of driving, the last thing I wanted to hear when we checked into the hotel was that it was overbooked. They didn't have a room with double beds for us, so they gave us a king bed room with a sofa bed. The king bed had such a sag in the middle that it was shaped like a contact lens. When we pulled out the sofa bed, the sheets were filthy. AND the wifi did not reach to our room on the end of the corridor. It was immediately clear we would not be spending our FL vacation at that place.
So yesterday, we checked out and drove around looking for another hotel room. Remember, one of the reasons we'd decided to stay the extra weeks in FL was because the room was so cheap. Finally, we ended up at a TownPlace Suites Marriot place in a 2 bedroom suite. It costs more, but it has a full kitchen, thereby eliminating the need to eat out all the time. We also decided to trim our expenses by rescheduling a side trip that would have involved a rental car and extra hotel rooms. So overall, we feel like this was the best choice and we can relax.
Let the vacation begin.
Comments