The Blanchard Family, Allison, Lisa, Ken and Sara.What would Thanksgiving be without a memorable travel story? It wouldn't be as interesting now would it?
I left for Tucson on Wednesday, November 23 and as holiday travel goes, it was a breeze. Yes, there was a delay in Dallas, but I was only about an hour and a half late into Tucson. So in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't too bad. Of course, this did alter Ken and Lisa's plans to pick me up with the whole family "in toe", so it was just Ken at the airport awaiting my arrival, but since Sara and Allison are 4 (almost 5) and 1 (almost 2), I didn't want them staying up until all hours. Although, right until the end Sara wanted to meet me at the airport and as soon as I got to their house around 11pm I was "required" to wake her up and give her a big hug and kiss. I know, I'm digressing here, but hey, it's my blog, and I can do what I want! :)
The rest of my time in Tucson was great, I couldn't have asked for better weather, 75 degrees and sunny everyday, except Sunday, the day I left, and then it was still sunny but only in the upper 50's. There were about 28 people for Thanksgiving dinner at K&L's and there was so much delicious food. The remainder of my time visiting was just hanging out doing whatever "daily" stuff the Blanchard family does. We went to one of my favorite restaurants in Tucson a place called Sauce, which has terrific salads and pizza, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it! Then right next door is Tucson's remedy for gelato addicts. A place called Frost, yup, a true gelateria right in Tucson. It was started by a couple business college students for a class project and it has taken Tucson by storm!
So, now for the story of my return home...sit back, relax, maybe grab a glass of wine, because this is one crazy romp across the southeastern US!
I was scheduled to leave Tucson on Sunday, November 27 at around 2:30 in the afternoon. I got to the airport a couple hours early, had some lunch and headed to the gate. Once I was in the gate area the agent announced the flight may be in an "over-sold" situation and anyone with flexible travel plans who wanted to give up there seat would get a $200 voucher and a flight on Monday. I had taken Monday off work in the event of something like this happening, but for just $200 (since airfares are pretty pricey), I figured I would just go on to Dallas for my connection. Plus I knew K&L were getting ready to go to NYC on Wednesday and I didn't want to "get in their way". So, I head off to Dallas (DFW). We land in DFW a little late, but that's ok, because my connecting flight was delayed by 30 minutes...no big deal. Well, of the 7 runways at DFW, only 2 were open. They were having 45 mph winds, so they weren't letting any planes take off, only land. So, we board the plane in hopes that the winds will die down. The plane gets out on the runway and sits for 2 hours. We then have to go back to the gate to re-fuel and one of the flight attendants has "timed out" and she can't fly anymore, so luckily a replacement is found and we can get back on the plane. We sit at the gate all fueled up and with the new flight attendant for about an hour. Then the co-pilot gets on the intercom and tells us the flight has been cancelled because the other flight attendant (not the new one) has now "timed out" and she can't fly and they are still not letting flights take off. So, we all get off the plane.
Once back in the terminal, with all the other passengers from their cancelled flights trying to re-book their reservations, you can imagine the line at the customer service desk! So, as people are finishing their re-booking and walking back towards the end of the line (that's about how I felt..."at the end of my rope"), we found out that the earliest flights out that we could get on were not until Tuesday or Wednesday...now remember this is Sunday night! So I made my own "Executive" decision, got out of line and headed to the rental car desk...
If you've ever been to the DFW airport you know it's enormous, the rental car center is not even at the airport terminal, there is a shuttle bus that takes you to the rental car center, which to me, looked like it's own terminal building it was so big! So, I head over to the Dollar Rental Car desk since they had a sign up saying "Cars Available" and a pretty short line. Well, now I know why...they were going to charge me $500 to rent a car to drive to Savannah!!!!! So I went over to the National Car Rental desk..."no reservation= no car", same with Alamo. Then I sauntered over to Avis, by now their line was pretty short...and BINGO! They had a car I could rent one way to Savannah and not for $500, but all they would rent me was a Suzuki SUV...can you say "Great Gas Mileage" ;) But at least I had wheels and the open road. So I headed out of the airport and away from Dallas, since most every flight had been cancelled I figured the chances of me getting a hotel room for the night in Dallas (and by the way, it's now midnight) were pretty slim. So, I drove for about an hour to Terrell, Texas...and if that town sounds familiar to you it's because Jamie Foxx, "the Oscar Winner" is from there...where I got off the highway (I-20) and pulled into a La Quinta Inn. You may be asking, why did I pick the La Quinta, when there were 6 others to choose from? Well, First, the parking lot was well lit, but Second and most important it was right next to a Starbucks and I know that the next morning I would need a VENTI caramel macchiato! :)
So I checked into the hotel and crawled into bed. I think it was about 2:30am by the time I actually fell asleep and then the alarm went off at 5:30am...yup...3 hours of sleep. Now, let me tell you why only 3 hours of sleep. My original game plan was to rent the car for 1 day and have it in Savannah by midnight on Tuesday (are you following all the days and times here???), so I wanted to get on the road ASAP, but I also knew that Starbucks wouldn't be open until around 5:30 or 6am...gee, I sure do have my priorities straight!
Good-bye Terrell, Texas at 6am...hello Interstate 20...thank God, with my warped need for travel, months ago I got on mapquest and just for grins punched in Hilton Head, SC to Tucson, AZ and I remembered seeing that I-20 went straight out of Dallas all the way to Atlanta, GA...ahhh, a familiar city! :) So, I "blew threw" (if you can call it that) east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by 4:30pm on Monday. I would have kept going but I had to stop in Birmingham, Alabama for a couple reasons...1) I didn't have my driving glasses with me (but I did have my sunglasses), 2) It started raining and I mean RAINING! 3) There were tornado warnings saying to "Get to your safe place"...well, were the hell was my safe place???? I was in an SUV driving down the road! 3) Unfamiliar car, and unfamiliar road (plus no glasses for night driving, let alone the rain... and last but not least, I had driven 10 hours on 3 hours of sleep...not such a good combination! So I stopped in Hoover, Alabama just outside Birmingham.
Lucky for me I found a hotel with...you guessed it... a Starbucks next to it! ;)
Tuesday morning (more like Monday night) I realized that if I left Birmingham at 6am, I would hit Atlanta right during their rush hour...Birmingham is about a 2 hour drive to Atlanta. So, I waited until 8:30 (Atlanta time) to leave Birmingham and the rest is pretty smooth sailing. I hit the outskirts of Atlanta at 10:45am, was able to pick up I-285 which goes around Atlanta and pick up I-75 on the south side of the city. And miracle of miracles, I was able to get around Atlanta and headed towards Macon, GA in 20 minutes! The rest of the drive is pretty uneventful but as usual for me, I knew just were to stop in Macon, yup, Starbucks to re-fuel for the "home stretch" on I-16 from Macon to Savannah. All this time my terrific friends and mom(seriously, not being sarcastic here) would call me on my cell phone to see how my progress was on this marathon trip!
I pulled into the Savannah airport rental car drop off at about 2:45pm on Tuesday. So, if you are ever in need of knowing how long it takes to get from Dallas to Savannah by car, it's 17 hours, ok, so I may have stopped to eat a couple times and gas up the ol' SUV, but that's a pretty accurate estimate. Once I returned the car to Avis I had driven 1057 miles and the last thing I had to do was get into my own car...getting into a Honda Civic after driving an SUV for 2 days felt kinda weird! And drive the 30 minutes home...my own bed never felt sooooo good!
Looking back at this "intrepid travel adventure" I have to say that yes, I was tired, and sometimes bored in the car alone, but that's what traveling is all about. Sometimes you just have to be flexible and roll with the punches. Hey, I always wanted to see that part of the USA, I just never thought it wouldn't be from the interstate highway! :)
Some may say I was nuts and why didn't I just wait it out in Dallas, but work was calling and I needed to be back at the office...so, you know, I can earn some more money to go on another travel adventure!
I left for Tucson on Wednesday, November 23 and as holiday travel goes, it was a breeze. Yes, there was a delay in Dallas, but I was only about an hour and a half late into Tucson. So in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't too bad. Of course, this did alter Ken and Lisa's plans to pick me up with the whole family "in toe", so it was just Ken at the airport awaiting my arrival, but since Sara and Allison are 4 (almost 5) and 1 (almost 2), I didn't want them staying up until all hours. Although, right until the end Sara wanted to meet me at the airport and as soon as I got to their house around 11pm I was "required" to wake her up and give her a big hug and kiss. I know, I'm digressing here, but hey, it's my blog, and I can do what I want! :)
The rest of my time in Tucson was great, I couldn't have asked for better weather, 75 degrees and sunny everyday, except Sunday, the day I left, and then it was still sunny but only in the upper 50's. There were about 28 people for Thanksgiving dinner at K&L's and there was so much delicious food. The remainder of my time visiting was just hanging out doing whatever "daily" stuff the Blanchard family does. We went to one of my favorite restaurants in Tucson a place called Sauce, which has terrific salads and pizza, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it! Then right next door is Tucson's remedy for gelato addicts. A place called Frost, yup, a true gelateria right in Tucson. It was started by a couple business college students for a class project and it has taken Tucson by storm!
So, now for the story of my return home...sit back, relax, maybe grab a glass of wine, because this is one crazy romp across the southeastern US!
I was scheduled to leave Tucson on Sunday, November 27 at around 2:30 in the afternoon. I got to the airport a couple hours early, had some lunch and headed to the gate. Once I was in the gate area the agent announced the flight may be in an "over-sold" situation and anyone with flexible travel plans who wanted to give up there seat would get a $200 voucher and a flight on Monday. I had taken Monday off work in the event of something like this happening, but for just $200 (since airfares are pretty pricey), I figured I would just go on to Dallas for my connection. Plus I knew K&L were getting ready to go to NYC on Wednesday and I didn't want to "get in their way". So, I head off to Dallas (DFW). We land in DFW a little late, but that's ok, because my connecting flight was delayed by 30 minutes...no big deal. Well, of the 7 runways at DFW, only 2 were open. They were having 45 mph winds, so they weren't letting any planes take off, only land. So, we board the plane in hopes that the winds will die down. The plane gets out on the runway and sits for 2 hours. We then have to go back to the gate to re-fuel and one of the flight attendants has "timed out" and she can't fly anymore, so luckily a replacement is found and we can get back on the plane. We sit at the gate all fueled up and with the new flight attendant for about an hour. Then the co-pilot gets on the intercom and tells us the flight has been cancelled because the other flight attendant (not the new one) has now "timed out" and she can't fly and they are still not letting flights take off. So, we all get off the plane.
Once back in the terminal, with all the other passengers from their cancelled flights trying to re-book their reservations, you can imagine the line at the customer service desk! So, as people are finishing their re-booking and walking back towards the end of the line (that's about how I felt..."at the end of my rope"), we found out that the earliest flights out that we could get on were not until Tuesday or Wednesday...now remember this is Sunday night! So I made my own "Executive" decision, got out of line and headed to the rental car desk...
If you've ever been to the DFW airport you know it's enormous, the rental car center is not even at the airport terminal, there is a shuttle bus that takes you to the rental car center, which to me, looked like it's own terminal building it was so big! So, I head over to the Dollar Rental Car desk since they had a sign up saying "Cars Available" and a pretty short line. Well, now I know why...they were going to charge me $500 to rent a car to drive to Savannah!!!!! So I went over to the National Car Rental desk..."no reservation= no car", same with Alamo. Then I sauntered over to Avis, by now their line was pretty short...and BINGO! They had a car I could rent one way to Savannah and not for $500, but all they would rent me was a Suzuki SUV...can you say "Great Gas Mileage" ;) But at least I had wheels and the open road. So I headed out of the airport and away from Dallas, since most every flight had been cancelled I figured the chances of me getting a hotel room for the night in Dallas (and by the way, it's now midnight) were pretty slim. So, I drove for about an hour to Terrell, Texas...and if that town sounds familiar to you it's because Jamie Foxx, "the Oscar Winner" is from there...where I got off the highway (I-20) and pulled into a La Quinta Inn. You may be asking, why did I pick the La Quinta, when there were 6 others to choose from? Well, First, the parking lot was well lit, but Second and most important it was right next to a Starbucks and I know that the next morning I would need a VENTI caramel macchiato! :)
So I checked into the hotel and crawled into bed. I think it was about 2:30am by the time I actually fell asleep and then the alarm went off at 5:30am...yup...3 hours of sleep. Now, let me tell you why only 3 hours of sleep. My original game plan was to rent the car for 1 day and have it in Savannah by midnight on Tuesday (are you following all the days and times here???), so I wanted to get on the road ASAP, but I also knew that Starbucks wouldn't be open until around 5:30 or 6am...gee, I sure do have my priorities straight!
Good-bye Terrell, Texas at 6am...hello Interstate 20...thank God, with my warped need for travel, months ago I got on mapquest and just for grins punched in Hilton Head, SC to Tucson, AZ and I remembered seeing that I-20 went straight out of Dallas all the way to Atlanta, GA...ahhh, a familiar city! :) So, I "blew threw" (if you can call it that) east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by 4:30pm on Monday. I would have kept going but I had to stop in Birmingham, Alabama for a couple reasons...1) I didn't have my driving glasses with me (but I did have my sunglasses), 2) It started raining and I mean RAINING! 3) There were tornado warnings saying to "Get to your safe place"...well, were the hell was my safe place???? I was in an SUV driving down the road! 3) Unfamiliar car, and unfamiliar road (plus no glasses for night driving, let alone the rain... and last but not least, I had driven 10 hours on 3 hours of sleep...not such a good combination! So I stopped in Hoover, Alabama just outside Birmingham.
Lucky for me I found a hotel with...you guessed it... a Starbucks next to it! ;)
Tuesday morning (more like Monday night) I realized that if I left Birmingham at 6am, I would hit Atlanta right during their rush hour...Birmingham is about a 2 hour drive to Atlanta. So, I waited until 8:30 (Atlanta time) to leave Birmingham and the rest is pretty smooth sailing. I hit the outskirts of Atlanta at 10:45am, was able to pick up I-285 which goes around Atlanta and pick up I-75 on the south side of the city. And miracle of miracles, I was able to get around Atlanta and headed towards Macon, GA in 20 minutes! The rest of the drive is pretty uneventful but as usual for me, I knew just were to stop in Macon, yup, Starbucks to re-fuel for the "home stretch" on I-16 from Macon to Savannah. All this time my terrific friends and mom(seriously, not being sarcastic here) would call me on my cell phone to see how my progress was on this marathon trip!
I pulled into the Savannah airport rental car drop off at about 2:45pm on Tuesday. So, if you are ever in need of knowing how long it takes to get from Dallas to Savannah by car, it's 17 hours, ok, so I may have stopped to eat a couple times and gas up the ol' SUV, but that's a pretty accurate estimate. Once I returned the car to Avis I had driven 1057 miles and the last thing I had to do was get into my own car...getting into a Honda Civic after driving an SUV for 2 days felt kinda weird! And drive the 30 minutes home...my own bed never felt sooooo good!
Looking back at this "intrepid travel adventure" I have to say that yes, I was tired, and sometimes bored in the car alone, but that's what traveling is all about. Sometimes you just have to be flexible and roll with the punches. Hey, I always wanted to see that part of the USA, I just never thought it wouldn't be from the interstate highway! :)
Some may say I was nuts and why didn't I just wait it out in Dallas, but work was calling and I needed to be back at the office...so, you know, I can earn some more money to go on another travel adventure!
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