Sep 11 - another easy drive

We did not hurry out of Hemmingford, having breakfast with Sheryl and later with Jimmy once he was home. On the way out of town we stopped at Aunt Vi's, visiting for a few minutes before we headed south and she headed to the golf course. At 84 she is amazing. There's going to be a family gathering, which we will miss when in FL, including Aunt Kay (now 94), Aunt Teeny and Uncle Bruce, Bev from Sebastian FL and other cousins from the townships and locally.

We have slightly altered our FL departure plans, now leaving on the Tuesday during the first week of October to accommodate a visit from Sheryl and Jimmy ... great ! They'll fly down for the weekend, taking advantage of cheap airfares. That will give us a little extra time for boat shopping, which in my mind is now getting more urgent. I don't want to trailer the Bayliner down again. The issue isn't so much pulling the boat as wear and tear on that boat and the car. I've spent the morning browsing Craigslist and boat trader. Craigslist has quite a variety for sale ... my difficulty is knowing what is a "good" price for used boats. I'll have to do comparisons with other sources. I believe that there's also a "blue book" for boats sort of thing and will keep researching.

The trip down was easy, with a stop just into the U.S. for gas. I was running on fumes and put 24.5 gallons into my 24 gallon tank. That was the plan ... and I stuck to it. The border crossing was also easy, at the Hemmingford customs. I claimed approximately $250 worth of stuff, including shoes, cereal and wine. That included a case of red wine on its way to FL. We were inspected by two, yes two, agents. One at the car door and one at the back. It seemed that 9/11 generated extra caution.

We had two possible routes, one which took us off at US 17 and used a lot of 2 lane roads; the other being I287 / I78 / US 222 ... which we took. Of course there was always the Garden State / NJ Turnpike, but since we were headed west of Philly to Reading, that would have been extra miles and likely slower since this was Friday night. There were some slow spots on 222 and we lost perhaps 20 minutes from a "clear sailing" time, but not too bad considering. We were going to arrive at Jeffrey's earlier than planned -- we had told them that we wouldn't be down for dinner -- so called ahead and planned to go out. They picked a Red Robin restaurant and we coincidentally found it when I was looking for a restroom since we'd have arrived at their house before they got home. We stayed put and they met us there. Dinner was good ... Emma ate almost two full orders of the "bottomless" kids mac and cheese. She's quite the eater when she gets going.

Back at Jeffrey & Sara's, we played with Emma until it was almost 9pm and then we turned in. Sandy watched "Field of Dreams" on TV; I watched it on and off and dozed.

We don't have any particular plans for today. The original idea was to go to the zoo, but it's drizzling out so it wouldn't be much fun. Sandy will go with them tomorrow while I do my bike ride. Jeffrey helped me completely empty the car last night into their garage; I'll assemble the bike and be ready to go; I'll repack the car early Monday and we'll head to FL with an overnight in Lumberton on the way. I wanted to stay at "South of the Border" ... but we compromised on Lumberton :).

That's about it.