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 [...]
A Slow Meandering Trip to South Florida
Overview It's early spring in Virginia in March and Nancy and I have gotten cabin fever after being home for 3+ months from our 6 1/2-month cross country road trip to Alaska and we ready to hit the road once again. This short 1-month trip down through the south enabled us to experience spring through summer and then back to spring again while we travelled down to south Florida and back to our home in Virginia. Along the way we stopped to sample some of the best areas the south has to offer along with a little bit of spring baseball. This included stopovers and visits to in the following areas: Lynchburg, Virginia Milledgeville, Georgia Clermont, Florida Hollywood Beach, Florida Fort Myers, Florida Savannah, Georgia Wilmington, North Carolina Wytheville, Virginia We have made this journey many times in our lives and really like the slow meandering pace we can do now that we have more time. Now that we're retired, we take more time with stops paced about every 5 to 6 hours that allows us time to explore the areas as we pass through. The map below shows a high-level view of the roads travelled. Lynchburg, Virginia After leaving [...]
Shenandoah Valley Getaways – A Local’s Guide
Overview We live a few miles outside of Round Hill Virginia up on the Blue Ridge and this is within easy striking distance of a great deal of the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. I grew up in this area of the country but have travelled widely across North America, and I still believe that the Shenandoah Valley is still one of the most beautiful areas. The last few years we have been road tripping a lot and have written a great deal about our travels outside of this area but hadn't focused on what what's right in our own back yard. Nancy and I recently took a wonderful weekend trip that included an overnight stay at the historic Mimslyn Hotel in Luray Virginia. I thought I would use this as excuse to start to write more about what I know about this area. This leisurely getaway included stops at the numerous antique shops and stores that are in all of the small towns along this route and walking at some of our favorite places. Although we didn't do it on this trip you can also easily visit places like Luray Caverns and Shenandoah Caverns along this route as [...]
Stop 1: Marion, VA (The 2021 10 week Road Trip)
Let us introduce you to our travel mascot, Roadie. We aren't 100% sure whether its male or female, a moose or a reindeer - but it doesn't matter. It's just Roadie. Roadie has the best seat and view in the car, right in front of our GPS (we refer to as Gloria). Roadie is excited for what should be the first of many road trip adventures with us. This is the first day of our ten week cross country fall adventure in 2021! The Drive from Round Hill, VA to Marion, VA Round Hill VA to Marion VA The day we left was the first Sunday for NFL season - and we enjoy watching multiples games in sports bars. Therefore, we want to reach Marion, VA by kick-off so we left the house just after sunrise. We still want to savor the magnificent scenery and the weather is beautiful. There are only so many roads from your home that you can start an adventure south, and we've traveled this initial route many times. We finally do jump on I-81, then pull into Marion. Farms and Scenic Driving on Rt 340 As far as we are concerned, it never [...]
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 [...]