Last blog ended in Champaign Urbana Illinois. It was a quiet hotel that Sunday after being sold out the night before for the University of Illinois football game. We stayed in the hotel lounge for supper and drinks and had plenty of time to talk with the bartender! The food was surprisingly good for a small menu. And with the Brewers win on TV it led to a relaxing night and good nights sleep. Then breakfast in the hotel in the morning was well done and we were off for our drive to Bowling Green Kentucky.
From Champaign the most efficient route was mostly State highways which turned out to be mostly very nice roads. The majority of Illinois is fairly flat and perfect for the bread basket of the US. Being October we saw many fields with harvesting underway. There are a lot of corn and soybean fields being harvested in Illinois and Indiana. A scenic ride and part of it on the Ohio River Scenic Byway. Our 5 hour drive went by fairly quickly. We were into Bowling Green with no issues and landed at our Hilton Garden Inn. This was a new hotel for us there with very good Tripadvisor reviews (part of my search criteria) and a highly rated restaurant within walking distance (another part of my search criteria ). The hotel and restaurant lived up to expectations and we had another relaxing evening. A couple of old fashions for me and the best steak I have had in a while. So Monday was in the books. Another above average breakfast in the morning, though these hotels had an option to pay for breakfast when booking and were not the free breakfasts we often get. The quality may have reflected that! The Tuesday drive was a bit different than the day before, in that it was almost exclusively on I 65 heading south from Bowling Green. The traffic was also much heavier most of the day. Traffic moved along fairly well but required a lot of attention. Most drivers obviously don’t have lane departure help on their cars, So They Should Make an Attempt to Stay In The Lines! The reward was landing in Montgomery Alabama. Our first time to stop there. The Elevation Hotel was wonderful. We were greeted warmly and our bags taken to the rooms with us and we were given a tour of our room. A very new hotel with lot’s of modern touches. A special Old Fashioned prepared me for my juicy southern fried chicken and Chris loved her short rib. Part of the hotel is above the Street that Martin Luther King Jr marched on the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, and the area has a number of parks and museums dedicated to the civil rights movement. We did not get a chance to take any in but we will stay in Montgomery again. A relaxing evening and another excellent breakfast and we were back on the road again. This day we were on a lot of state highways again, angling into Florida. We came into I-10 east of Pensacola and from there it was very familiar road to I-75 and south to Gainesville. We have stayed in Gainesville multiple times and have a favorite hotel and brewery nearby. There were about 25 Comcast trucks in the parking lot, I thought they might be gathering to head north for a forecast hurricane. But it turns out Comcast recently bought out the local prominent cable service and contracted with the hotel for a month as they bring the services into the Comcast family. Good luck to those customers! We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and looked forward to a 4-hour ride on Friday to be home in Boynton Beach. It was an uneventful trip of us. We did see a major semi jack knife and miles of back up, luckily on the other side of the road. And this day we did see many caravans of emergency vehicles heading north for the hurricane. Most cities and services in Florida have reciprocal agreements to provide what help they can when a natural disaster is imminent. We made it to Boynton Beach as planned and worked to unload the car and get the condo’s open. Then it was several days of unpacking and getting adjusted to our surroundings again. We have done some cleaning and reorganizing, I did a little landscaping work that got out of control, and we had our first grill out with a few neighbors. So life is good. I golfed 9 holes to try and keep the swing in shape, and we have watch a Packer Win with our Bears neighbor, and watched 2 wonderful Brewer Wins. On to next steps.
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