Jan 18 - life's important lessons

Lesson # 1 -- Wytheville is pronounced with-ville, not wyt-th-ville, not with-ee-ville
Lesson # 2 -- the Wytheville Comfort Inn is not in Wytheville

Don't you just love driving an extra 30 miles after driving 600 miles ? Well, the good news is that I wasn't on a bicycle.

There were other important lessons to learn as well but overall I cannot complain about the day. For a winter's drive, it was fabulous. The temperature was mostly above freezing, which is important since my coat is still hanging over the back of the couch at the cottage :).

We hardly paused at the border. We had a young, serious, unsmiling TSA employee ask us our citizenship (he already had our passports); where are you coming from (cottage north of Toronto); how long have you been in Canada (a month); where do you live (Florida, then he walked back to see our license plate); what are you bringing with you (groceries and wine); what kind of groceries (mostly cereal); any fruit (no fruit, no meat); go ahead. As it happened, we were coming back to the U.S. exactly a month after we'd crossed into Canada. They never ask "how much wine?". We had our now-standard two cases. We are way, way under our dollar limit but I still haven't been able to figure out what they do about quantity of alcohol. Perhaps we never will.

We did the predicted 10 hours of driving in 9.5 hours, other than the diversion at the end. After we checked into our brand-new hotel which is actually very nicely appointed, needs to get run down some to really be a Comfort Inn standard, we went next door to the only restaurant in the area which had just closed two minutes earlier. The hotel clerk said that the only other things were fast food -- we could see signs for McD's, Wendy's, BK's ... but drove over there to look. Ah ha -- the Flying J (we're at the junction of I77 and I81 where they co-exist for a few miles) -- has a restaurant. I had quite passable fish & chips, leaving the substantial amount of batter behind; Sandy had breakfast -- scrambled eggs, bacon, toast.

Otherwise, the day was uneventful, which is just what you want. The car's odometer is now around 161,500 miles; we'll be around 8,700 miles on the trip by the end of today. It's just a jaunt down the road.

I've got to get moving. Sandy's almost ready.

Onward !