March 30, 2014 Stuart, FL to Green Bay WI

Our Altima

We were up at the crack of 8 and the Hertz guy picked us up at 8:30.  Mary was armed with her shower bag and I was packing my wallet.  We had requested a Corolla type car but instead we were  presented with a Nissan Altima.  A bigger car and really comfortable.  And gets really decent gas mileage.  So no complaints especially since the price was the same.

Roosevelt's.  

We left the rental place and immediately headed over to Roosevelt's which is our favorite breakfast place in the same strip mall where Uncle Giuseppe (our favorite Italian place) is located.  The same cheap, really good food like it was a year ago when we left.

In the slip and ready for us to leave

We headed back to the boat intent on leaving at 11.  I dropped Mary off at the marina office so she could shower while I packed everything up and hauled it out to the car.  I might mention the walk from the boat to the car is a good 1/4 mile.

Mary returned and we packed all the stuff we forgot to pack the first time.  After running through the "leave-the-boat" checklist we drove out of the marina parking area at 12:30 and headed out on the highway towards the north    But of course I had to make the obligatory stop at Publix to buy a few waters so I could get cash back thus avoiding an ATM and its associated cash withdrawal fees.

The day before we left I was talking to some of our dock mates and found a guy willing to change the outboard power tilt motor and do some patch work for us in the Caribe (dinghy).  I also took the measurements for a new stove since Defender was having a 10% off sale and stoves are not cheap.  So we're well on our way to spending a lot of money in the coming few weeks.  But at least this will be a soothing drive free from boat planning chores.

We were able to drive around 80-85 mph since that's what all the traffic was doing and the mileage was still in the high 20's.  We started looking for hotels around Macon Georgia.  We stopped first at nice Hampton Inn around Macon and it was full.  Same result for the Holiday Express across the road.  Odd, I thought but ok.  We have a lot of road to travel and it was only 8:30.

I guess I didn't notice the little black cloud hanging over my head.  We stopped 18 more times at various interchanges and hotels looking for a room.  Nothing.  Even the integer motels (Motel 6, 8) were full.  We kept this up for 600 miles all the way to the Kentucky state line (at 3:30am) before I gave in and pulled into the Kentucky Welcome Center and reclined the seat.  Mary's was already prone.  The temperatures were mild (50's) so we slept reasonably well.  The lack of a pillow-top mattress though .....

We're kinda hearty folk.  You wouldn't come to that conclusion seeing us creak and groan trying to exit the car and then shuffle bent over to the rest rooms.   A contributing factor might have been the hour.  It was 6:30 when we woke up.

Captivating and comfy attire

We headed out again and stopped for gas somewhere in southern Illinois.  We drove over to the nearby MacDonalds for some egg muffing breakfast thing.   I had abandoned my shorts at the rest area  for my Dr. Suess comfy pants.  The rather elderly group of stern farmers in the MacDonalds at first seemed disapproving of my attire.  But when two teenage girls complimented my pants they seemed to relax and even engaged my in a conversation of sorts.











Revived, we flew up the highway until we hit Rockford  Illinois in the early afternoon where we got a room in nice Hampton Inn right off the freeway.  We succumbed to Mary's decadent idea and called a local restaurant to bring us food.  Ate that, watched a bad comedy movie and went to sleep at 9pm.

Slept for 11 hours before waking up.  And if I had remembered we were in the central time zone, we'd have made it 12 hours.  But I didn't so we got up at 8:55 right before the free breakfast was over.  But it was really 7:55.   Oh well.

We sailed the remaining 60 miles to our daughters house to retrieve some mail, and then stopped at my sisters house in Milwaukee to get all their tax papers (3 stacks measuring 1 foot high) and made it up here to a hotel in Suamico around 3pm.   We had to get a suite in order to avoid moving rooms. After Mary finished with all her discount cards and sweet talking the clerk I think we paid abut the same for the suite.

So now, after discovering I left the stove measurements back at the boat and the sale ends tonight, I'm   eagerly looking forward to sorting through tax records.  Yeah ... life is good ...??