Day 16 Texas Vacation Xmas 2011

We awake early and have a quick breakfast before hitting the road home.  It is another foggy start to the day.  We have another long day ahead of us.  A 600 mile / 1000 km day.   Our destination for tonight is Cincinnati Ohio.

 

Soon we are leaving Arkansas and entering Tennessee.  We cross over the Hernando De Soto bridge and pass by the “Great American Pyramid” in Memphis Tennessee.  This pyramid has a few other nick names.  The “Memphians” call it the “Tomb of Doom” or the “Pyramid Arena”

  

A few hours further along, we see the familiar skyline of Nashville ahead of us.  We easily recognize this skyline because of the iconic “Batman” building.  This is the AT&T building in downtown Nashville TN.

 

The skies are clearing as we enter Kentucky.

 

We pass by a quilt barn and the National Corvette Museum as we race along I-65.

 

This RV caught our eye, there were lots of licence plates and bumper stickers plastered all over the back end.

The moon was rising in front of us and the sun was setting behind us as we drove the final miles to Cincinnati.

  

The Cincinatti skyline at dusk.

  

We arrived at the Best Western Mariemont shortly after 6pm.  This Best Western is rated the number one hotel in Cincinnati on Trip Advisor.  This is an old Tudor style hotel and we really enjoyed our stay here and when in the area, we will stay here again.

Usually we would stay at a hotel closer to the border or drive straight home, but a few days ago we got in touch with an online blogging friend of ours and agreed to get together for dinner.   We have followed Denny Gibson’s blog these last several years because of his association with the Lincoln Highway and Route 66 and other scenic / historic roads that we have travelled.  We read each others blogs and we have chased each other around the country on these back roads, but we never were in the same place at the same time.  This was the perfect opportunity to finally meet because Denny lives in Cincinnati.

We met Denny in the restaurant on the main floor of the hotel, where we enjoyed a couple of beers and burgers and some great conversations about road trips past and planned.  Thanks for your hospitality Denny, it was a great evening and very nice to finally meet you.  I know our paths will cross and we look forward to seeing you again.

After dinner Denny recommended that we walk a short distance to a small ice cream shop.  Graeter’s Ice Cream… the richest, creamiest ice cream that I have ever tasted.  Even Karen would agree that it was very good and delicious, but for her nothing beats Baskin Robins Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream.  We were still very full from dinner, so it was single scoops for each of us.

Here are some pictures of our room. The room even had a fireplace.

  

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the TV was and then I saw this little note.

With the push of a button, the portrait in the frame rolled up and there was our TV.

  

Tomorrow we will drive the final miles to home.

Day 2 Texas Vacation Xmas 2011

’Twas the day before Christmas, we are up with the dawn, there is no time for sleeping in, we really need to be gone.

We got up at 7am and had breakfast and got ready to leave the hotel.  Our hotel is just minutes from the border so we arrived at Customs by 8am.  There were no cars lined up this morning, we just drove right up to the booth.  The Customs agent asked us several questions, Do we have any food, alcohol, tobacco, how much money do we have and do we have any rice.   That’s the first time for being asked the rice question.

  

The Customs agent waved us on.  The road construction that we encountered the last time we crossed at Windsor / Detroit has all been completed and there is now a short ramp that takes you directly onto I-75    That is a big improvement to the old way of getting to I-75

The Detroit factories were belching smog as we drove past them.  The billboard in the 2nd photo is very appropriate, the young girl won’t live long breathing in all that smog.

 

By 9am we were crossing into Ohio.



1pm we crossed into Kentucky.



By 3:30 pm, (thanks to the time zone change) we enter Tennessee.  



We stopped for the night in Nashville.  We drove 900 KM today.  This is a good days run and puts us in a good position for the rest of the journey. 

We had planned on having Christmas Eve dinner at a nearby Shoney’s and I had even called ahead a few days earlier to make sure that they would be open Christmas Eve for dinner.  The person answering the phone assured me they would be open.  Well they were closed when we got to their door at 5:10 pm, the sign in the door said closed at 5pm.. so much for planning and phoning ahead.   Instead we had Christmas Eve dinner at a Jack in the Box next door. 

Early to bed this evening, we have a 1000 KM day planned for tomorrow.

If you would like to see all of the photos that we took today, you can click on this link to our FLICKR site.

Day 2 Texas Vacation Xmas 2008

Today is Sunday December 21 2008

It is cold this morning. We are wearing our winter coats because it is only a degree or two above freezing. We are on the road early, we have to make up for lost time, so I am planning on driving from Shepherdsville Kentucky to Palestine Texas. A total of 1300 KM.

We had a quick breakfast and we are on the road at 7:30 am. First stop is in Franklin KY for some fuel and a car wash, the car is filthy after driving through all that slush and snow yesterday.

We drive through Tennessee and into Arkansas where we stop for lunch in Earle Arkansas, we fuel up and push on towards Texas.

It is not getting any warmer, the whole country seems to be under a cold snap, in fact there are reports on the radio of the possibility of freezing rain in Northern Texas tomorrow morning. Last winter when we were travelling South to Florida, I had fun watching the digital thermometer on the dashboard climb degree by degree as we moved further and further South. That is not the case this year, the temperature is just staying steady at a few degrees above freezing.

We got a little turned around in Texarkana, this city is located in Texas and Arkansas, hence the name. I know we crossed over into Texas because we stopped at the Texas Welcome Center and took a couple of pictures.

We left the Welcome Center and got back onto the bypass that circles around Texarkana and we must have missed our exit for Hwy 59 South because next thing I know we are entering Arkansas again and wound up on a highway heading us towards Shreveport LA. I had to fire up the GPS and get ourselves back on course for Palestine TX where we have booked our hotel room for the night. We are not due to arrive in Palestine until 9pm so we stop for a quick dinner at McDonalds in Jefferson Texas.

I am not a big fan of driving at night, especially on roads that I do not know, but we have no choice if we are going to stick to our schedule. We get into Palestine TX around 9pm, it has been a long day of driving, but we are only 800 KM from our destination.

Day 1 Texas Vacation Xmas 2008

Today is Saturday December 20, 2008

Today we are leaving for our Christmas Vacation. We are going to spend 10 days on South Padre Island Texas. But first we have to get there.

Our original plan was to leave home yesterday afternoon at 5pm and drive as far as Windsor Ontario where we will get a hotel room and stay overnight and get up early in the morning to cross over the border into the USA.

The weather is not co-operating though. There is a severe winter storm happening in Central and Southern Ontario right now and some roads are closed and other roads are barely passable. I have been watching the weather radar online and watching the weather channel on TV. This storm is going to be past us around 10 pm, but there is another storm following right behind. I can see about an 8 hour window of opportunity to get out of here and head South between the storms. The problem is, that window of opportunity is at 3 am and will require 15 hours of driving as far south as we can get as quickly as we can to avoid this second storm. If we don’t do that, we will be stuck here till the second storm passes.

So we are up at 3am and backing down the driveway, the snow is about 10 inches deep in the driveway and on our street, but if we don’t get stuck, we will get out onto the main road where the snow has been plowed and the road is somewhat driveable. The roads were snow covered and snow packed and it wasn’t till we got to Kitchener that we actually started to find some bare pavement. We stopped in Maidstone at the Tim Hortons for a quick coffee and bagels for breakfast. We are making good time all things considered and got to the Windsor / Detroit border crossing around 9am.

There was about a 1 hour delay at the border but that is typical, and we are on our way South. I want to try to get as far as Kentucky to be sure that we are well South of that second storm that is moving into the Michigan and Ontario regions.

We drove through the States of Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky

We got into Sheppardsville Kentucky around 7pm and checked into our hotel room. It was a long drive, but I am happy that we are far enough South to not be caught up in any bad weather to the North of us. We are about 5 hours behind schedule but I believe that I can make up for lost time over the next couple of days so that we arrive on South Padre Island on Dec 22 as planned.

We drove 1100 KM today.