A little over 2 days and 1814 Miles
Written 3/3/2024.
[Yes, this post deals with before and after yesterday’s post]
The alarm rings and I roll over. Midnight, time to get up and out the door. The first hours of Friday, coffee is brewing (10 cups) automatically so I can smell that beautiful smell upstairs in the bedroom.
I tried to get a little sleep in anticipation for this first leg of the journey. Driving from outside of Chicago to Southern Virginia.
I had packed a cooler full of 4 sandwiches, carrot sticks, sliced peppers, protein drinks, protein bars, and soda. In a separate 2-gallon cooler was filtered water I’d use to refill the metal water bottle I brought along.
This plus all that coffee which went into an old green steel Stanley thermos for the ride. I’d use this to refill my travel mug throughout the next 3 days.
By 12:30 am, I was easing the car out of the garage on a quiet evening. Traffic was light throughout the trip and the roads were dry. I set the cruise control for 9 miles over the speed limit so that I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pulled over by police.
The final piece was that I had downloaded book one of the Wheel of Time series. Just 32 hours of listening pleasure that was sure to take me through these next days.
Two tanks of gas later, I roll into the college where my daughter goes. It’s a women’s college, just 600 enrolled on a 2800-acre campus. The security guard checks me in and I pull into the Inn located on campus.
The Inn is one of my favorite places. First, the price is right with the parent discount. Second, it is well maintained with comfortable beds and pillows and the setting is beautiful. This is where my daughter and I first stayed when we were doing the college tour.
Texting my daughter that I had arrived (around 1:30 pm) and that I was going to take a nap, I did so. That only lasted an hour and then we got together at Daisey’s Café on campus. That was where her friends all met me and introduced themselves. My daughter parading her dad to her friends and me listening to them giggle with each other. It was a joy to see. From there we hung out in her dorm room, then she needed to get ready for her play, Fefu and Friends. That was in another post.
The next morning it was breakfast at a hole in the wall diner. If it weren’t for a parent recommendation, I would have never known about this place. A white building in the middle of nowhere with a gravel parking lot. It was a family affair with the mom behind the counter and her oldest child, around 13 years old, taking and fulfilling orders.
I dropped my daughter off on campus and hit the road. It was about 5 hours to my son’s place, arriving at 3 pm. Since Friday evening the weather had turned to a light misting drizzle from Virginia through Philadelphia (where my son is), the drive as okay, just not as fun as it could have been.