An Indy 500 Road Trip
Overview A trip to the Indy 500 was a bucket list item for us and one of our sons (who has gone every year for over 15 years) finally got us to plan a trip out to this enormous event. We put in our request for tickets in June of 2023 through the Indianapolis Motor Speedway website. In September we were notified we'd been granted 2 tickets and so we began laying out a trip just to head out to Indiana and back over a few days, including reservations at the same hotel our son stays at. In February of 2024, our youngest son (whose wife is from Florida) told us they were expecting a child and a baby shower was going to take place in Tampa the weekend before the race. This road trip encompasses going to both, still enjoying the travel pace we normally like to travel at and exploring areas and towns we had not been to before. On this amazing road trip, we picked up the following amazing areas: Alpine, Georgia Dunedin, Florida Columbus, Georgia Franklin, Tennessee Indianapolis, Indiana Elkins, West Virginia Marion, Virginia If you've ever followed our posts, you know we like to [...]
Stops 23&24 – Gatlinburg, TN & Roanoke VA (The 2021 10 Week Road Trip)
This is STOPS 23 and 24, the final 6 days of our ten week cross country fall adventure in 2021! Here is a link to our previous stop in Fairhope AL & Gadsden AL. The Drive from Gadsden, AL to Gatlinburg, TN It is hard to believe that our 10 weeks of travel are almost over and we are heading to our final portion of this trip. We are very excited we will be 4 days in Gatlinburg, TN where we spent our honeymoon 21 years ago - and we will be there for our 21st anniversary. We did do a week long lake vacation with our 5 kids back in 2005 at nearby Douglas Lake - where we all went to Pigeon Forge (the town next to Gatlinburg) for an afternoon & evening. We wonder how much it will have changed in all that time. We've identified a scenic drive that keeps us off the interstate. Ittakes us to an area that includes Little River Canyon National Preserve in northeast AL. From Gadsden we take Tabor Road which takes us through a section of rural Alabama and we follow this north until we get to the little town of [...]
Stop 3: Chattanooga, TN (The 2021 10 Week Road Trip)
This is the 4th and 5th days of our ten week cross country fall adventure in 2021! Here is a link to our previous stop in Bryson City ,NC. Cherohala Skyway We first make our way from Bryson City to the town of Robbinsville where we enter the Cherohala Skyway. Here are some interesting facts about this road It is listed as one of the top ten motorcycle routes by the Discovery Channel It is the most expensive highway in NC with a price tag of $100,000,000 It is a total of 41 miles that winds up and over 5,400 foot mountains for 18 miles in North Carolina and descends another 23 miles into Tennessee, ending in Tellico Plains Its name is a combination of the two national forests that it runs through: Cherokee National Forest and Nantahala National Forests - thus the name “Chero…hala” This drive features views ridge after ridge ,with hiking and numerous overlooks and picnic tables. We have a picnic lunch and just enjoy the peace and solitude of the area. Once we exit the skyway, we have another 50 miles of scenic driving on our way to Chattanooga. The Bluff View Inn The heavens [...]
An Epic 10 Week Southern and Southwest Road Trip
We originally planned to fly into Rome and road trip over a few weeks up to Venice where we were going to catch an 8 country Mediterranean cruise. We waited until the first week of August before bailing out of this trip (too many Covid restrictions in place). This left us trying to figure out what travel we wanted to do this fall. On Monday, we cancelled out of our European vacation and started the process of putting a backup plan into motion. Hard to believe, but we had this trip planned and booked before the end of the weekend. Since we are retired now, we have a lot of flexibility when it comes to travel planning - but there are still time considerations. We decided to close our pool early this year (right after Labor Day) and we wanted to return home in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with our children and grandkids. That established the time frame of about 10 weeks maximum. Next we identified 2 major initial objectives: Big Bend National Park (West Texas) Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area (Northern Utah) Next we had to identify how to get to Big Bend, from Big Bend to Flaming Gorge [...]