A great place to stay

It turns out, picking hotels may be an art.  Our needs are not consistent.  Our desires are somewhat consistent, but our desires are tempered at times by price.

Here at Wrightsville Beach we picked a great place to stay.   Best Western Plus University Inn Wilmington.  Close to where we wish to be.  Good price.  Room very clean, neat, well appointed.  Small dog park for Holly with low growing grass that she doesn't get lost in.  Lobby and common areas are well suited to sneak away to while Debbie sleeps in.  Great breakfast.

It would be grand if all our picks were this good, but we can imagine there will be a horror story to tell by the time we get to the Pacific Ocean.  Hotels are ranked and reviewed, but who can you trust?

FIshing for Holly

Holly now has over a dozen friends who we will have to circle back to see.  Five at Peggy and Joe's.  One at Mary and Barry's.  She is a very happy dog.  Scared of nothing.  Plays all the time.  You can see above she is playing tug-a-war with Mabry.  You can see below Mabry has taken the high ground and is playing, fishing for Holly.

All too funny!

What the heck?

Just generally you can get a Residence Inn for $159.00:

But if you are a AAA member you can get a room for $169.00:

Glad I am a AAA member.  (smile)

Fall colors tracker

Detailed Blue Ridge Parkway Fall Colors Tracker

The wandering Rosers

Wanderers, best term I have heard yet.  Homeless, gypsy, vagabond, all were terms I didn't like because of the various connotations.  Before today I settled on calling ourselves, nomads.  But now, wanderers.

In this adventure two weeks, all is going well and mostly as expected.  We still have too much stuff to wrestle with but were are paring down and packing better every time we have to go into a bag, duffel or suitcase.

Debbie is doing well.  Eating is mechanical but easy.  Her nutrition is well settled.  We are trying to discover what her stamina will allow her to do.  This week has been filled with activity and here at week's end she is tired.

Holly is doing well.  Crateable and easy to deal with.

The travel trailer is still in our thinking but if our touring interests continue to match hotel deals as well as they have, we will continue to hotel hop.

The Benz

Distronic Plus cruise control is great, and the only reason Orlando traffic has not frustrated me one bit this week!

Cruise on the Benz has two inputs.  One, speed.  Two, distance from car ahead.  If there is no car ahead you travel at set speed.  If there is a car ahead you travel at set distance from the car ahead.  Speed changes automatically to follow the flow of traffic.  Up to set speed.  Down to full stop.  Stop and go traffic is a breeze, and I am sure Distronic does better than most drivers, especially me.

So then what if Distronic brings you to a full stop?  If traffic starts moving again within 3 seconds, you start moving without any driver input.  If 3 seconds has passed you have to pull the cruise paddle to start moving.

Another cool feature of the Benz, dynamic navigation.  Traffic is monitored and routing is changed to avoid bad traffic.  It works!  The first calculation of a route to friends included a straight run on I 4 through downtown Orlando at 5:30 pm on Friday.  Before reaching downtown, the route was changed to drop off I 4 onto secondary roads and through neighborhoods.  We were no more than two minutes later than the original calculation, even though average speed on I 4 had reportedly fallen to 10 mph.

Now Debbie's chauffeur, I love this car!

Play ball!

Elijah catching . . .

. . . and batting . . .

The interested spectators, Debbie, Mom and Zachariah . . .