Wednesday, February 29, 2012

2012 Southern Odyssey

Day 2 started with a 3 hour drive to Knoxville, where I met my friend Alyce for a walk in a local park with the dogs and lunch. The weather was perfect spring-smelling weather. Delightful!

I had a reservation at the Macon Red Roof Inn. I checked my map before leaving Knoxville to find a rest area for a stop between 3:30-4, and found one between Chattanooga and Atlanta. We had a nice walk there, and given the time and distance still to go - 2.5 hours - I checked for any Red Roofs further south on I-75, but didn't come up with any. Yes, we hit Atlanta at rush hour, as many had warned me about, but I just stayed on 75 and enjoyed my book on CD.  It only took 15 minutes longer than the GPS had estimated, so really not that bad. Traffic isn't as bad to me when I'm expecting it.

The motel I'm at is unlike any Red Roof I can remember staying at - there are inside hallways instead of outside doors. Darn. I really like outside doors! I used the motel cart to unload my ridiculous amount of stuff, walked the dogs, and settled down to eat my dinner and read email. I suddenly remembered, "Conference call!" which was scheduled for 8 PM. When I looked at my watch, it was right at 8. I'm not sure why I didn't get the reminders I thought I set, but it was fine. The call went on for 2 hours (I'm on the committee looking to revise the requirements for the Flat-Coated Retriever Hall of Fame). Phew!

Feed dogs, walk dogs, call to hubby and sleep.

Today, we've got about 5 hours of driving to get to Betsy Reiney's place in Palatka, FL. While I'm not looking forward to 85 degree weather (the 60's in Tennessee is my preferred temps), I'm really looking forward to spending a bunch of time field training/swimming the dogs in the next 48 hours.

I'll see if I can get some video of Sonic swimming later today...

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