On the Road Again!

It hardly seems possible that we are making our tenth winter visit to Tucson. We spent two winters touring Florida and one winter in Texas, but we have truly found our winter escape in Arizona.

   When we started our trip in Lapeer it was 32 degrees and the temperature continued to climb until we arrived in Kentucky when it topped out at 62.

   Today’s travel was perfect, light traffic and good weather. Also plenty of college football to listen to on the radio to make the time pass quickly. Because I often drive my bus on Saturday I never get to watch “College Gameday” on ESPN anymore, but I got to listen to it on the XM radio on the trip down here today.

    Unlike previous years, we did not leave in the middle of the night as we decided to make a leisurely departure and travel only to northern Kentucky on this first leg of our journey west.

   Perhaps the only thing we didn’t anticipate was that there was some basketball game here of local interest (Kentucky versus Louisville) which meant every sports bar was packed to the gills with fans from both sides.

   We headed to a sports bar to watch the Oklahoma versus LSU semi-final playoff game, only to find most of the TVs tuned to the basketball game and many rowdy fans. We did find one table near the football game TV so it all worked out. The game was a stinker though as Oklahoma laid a giant egg.

    We’ve had first day travels way worse than this one, including ice, snow and frigid temperatures so 2019-2020 will go down (at least for today) as one of the nicest travel days we have had.

   Tonight we are staying at a Best Western in Florence, Kentucky which, as it unfortunately turned out, is on the direct flight path to the airport that serves Cincinnati, Ohio. The insulation seems to keep most of the flight noise out though.

    The water tower just a stone’s throw from the hotel announces “Florence Y’all.” 

   Tomorrow we will continue our trek with an overnight stay with son John, daughter-in-law Nicole and the three grandchildren living in Tennessee. Then we’ll begin our earnest travel west on Monday. I probably won’t blog again until Monday night.

   Anytime we travel north to south on I-75 in Ohio we are reminded of an observation of our oldest grandson, who opined that “Ohio is a very long state.”  Actually not so long, but because of the boring terrain it does seem long.

Time out: 11 a.m.

Mileage out: 32133

Time in: 4:16 p.m.

Mileage in: 32472