One week to go

Here's the plan all mapped out.  We follow the purple line south and then west. We turn back at San Diego and follow the more northerly and easterly route back home. Now I just have to plan what we need to take and pack it all up.

Today the sun is shining and the bit of wintry white we had has all but disappeared except for Andre's shriveling snowman and shrinking snowball fort. But it will not last as this IS Ohio. So we are making our plans to head south and west for February. Yes, the WHOLE month. Planning actually began in November when I gathered gobs of maps and books from my friendly AAA. I love these paper products but the real help is the online Triptik maker. It allowes you to plan your route, save it at any point, retrieve it, alter it in any way at anytime. The best feature is that it tells you the drive time from point to point so you can scpe out the best stopping points. This alone is worth the price of a AAA membership.

Another thing I did in preparation was to get a Hilton Honors card to earn points for free rooms. We will be staying at lots of Hampton Inns although not exclusively. The Triptik also shows you the hotels, etc. in places you go but I book them through Hilton to gain some advantage. They give you the same AAA discounts that you get directly from AAA.

The "practice run" to Santa Fe in December only has increased my excitement to take this loooong road trip to the Pacific Ocean and back and really see a lot of the country. I will try to post daily from the road but make no promises. My ipad will be my techy partner (Dan is the untechy partner) on the journey and the only way to post to the blog is by email so the artfulness of the blog will be limited.