Your Questions Answered

 A number of you have asked some very thoughtful questions re: driving to Florida. In today’s edition of the blog, I’ll attempt to answer a few of these.

1. How many miles from Minnetonka to Belleair Beach?  According to the Spousal Unit, it is 1,620 miles.  

2. How far do you drive every day?  We go about 8 hours the first day, usually sponging off my sister in Arlington Heights, IL or my sister-in-law in Kankakee, IL. Due to COVID, we bypassed staying with relatives and spent the night in a dog friendly hotel in Rensselaer, IN.  Second day is our longest, ending in Dalton, Georgia.  Third day we pull into our home away from home late afternoon, early evening.  We tend to get on the road each day between 8 and 8:30 a.m.

3.  Ah, yes, the dog.  How does he travel?  Hank travels like a champ.  We bring his blankies and set him up in the back seat, where he engages in the same behavior as he does at home.  He sleeps.

4. What do you do in the car besides drive?  Satellite radio provides varied diversions.  So do podcasts and audible books.  I read or crochet while in the passenger seat.  Our new car has Wi-Fi so I’m blogging as we drive through Kentucky today. 

5. Do you ever hit bad weather?  It usually rains on our way down but it’s glorious springtime as we drive home in May.  

6. How about eating?  The hotels now don’t offer the free hot breakfast so we do something grab and go, usually the famous Egg McMuffin.  I pack some snacks, mostly gum and hard candy.  At the hotel, we order for take out.  Hank doesn’t like to stay alone in the hotel room.

7. How often do you stop?  We do put the pedal to the metal so we limit stops to gas and bathroom breaks.  There are so many places I’d like to stop but the dog limits that: whiskey distilleries through Kentucky; Nashville; hike the Appalachian trail.  We’ll figure it out.

8. How’s it going right now?  Thanks for asking.  We left Minnetonka a day early to beat the snow that will be coming  through the Midwest today.  It’s cloudy, some drizzle as we approach Bowling Green, KY and the forecast is for rain, probably until we get into FL.  We listened to Leave the World Behind and neither of us was particularly enamored of it.  (I download books from the library on the Overdrive app to listen, to my Kindle to read.). Road Trip Radio on Sirius XM has been great.  Lots of stationary shoulder shaking dancing.

Do you have a question you’d like me to answer?  Leave it in the comments section below !

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