This is the Way to Travel

This is definitely better than any other sort of travel we have done, except of course for the extensive travel to our first event. 

We tried to get them to change our training so we did not have to do 1300 miles in 4 days but there was no way to change that so we drove from Cedar Hill, Texas to Monroeville, Pennsylvania in 4 days. The good news is there is no other event that will have us doing this much travel in these many days…phew!

We left on Tuesday morning and drove 324 miles to Bryant, Arkansas where we had dinner at TaMolly’s Mexican restaurant that had excellent authentic food, the ambiance was perfect and the service was superb. 

Our stay at La Quinta Inn & Suites in Bryant was also excellent, the room was clean, the bed was so comfortable and we absolutely love staying at places where there is NO smoking throughout, not just some rooms and/or floors…the smoke travels into the non-smoking rooms and it is hard to sleep.

Traveling this way, we have NO worries about breakdowns, driving a brand new truck makes it easier to believe that there will not be any issues. No worries about the heat, just turn on the air and drive. No worries about hearing and feeling every bump when we drive, the shocks on this vehicle takes most of them without any issues. No worries about our funds since it is all covered with the company charge card…life is really good!

Now on Wednesday we did have a slight issue with the trailer hitch. I-40 east was a nightmare through Arkansas and if we were in Maggie she would have lost it all but in this truck it was just a bit rough but it did end up shearing off one of the pins that was holding up the jack plate and it began to drag so once we were through the construction area and was able to safely pull it over to check it out we made a quick fix by tying it up until we found a Walmart a few miles up the road to get the necessary pin replacements. We learned from when Maggie was towing May that we never use those pins that always comes with the hitches, instead we put on master locks. Not for the theft of them but for the safety, they do not shear nor do they jump out of the holes, they stay locked on tight and do not disconnect during rough roads. Guess we weren’t thinking but when we stopped we bought locks for all of the connections at the hitch.

We made it to our next destination, Dickson, Tennessee. Driving 327 miles we first stopped for dinner at Ruby Tuesday, our food was scrumptious and the service was outstanding.

We then checked into the Comfort Inn, though not as nice as the others and was actually border line but it was still adequate even though the entrance door was flimsy, there were scratchings in many common areas like the elevators, a few guys hanging out in the parking lot drinking beers and the toilet was in a closet which was even smaller then our setup in Maggie...imagine that!

Our 3^rd day we drove 311 miles where we found a great deal at Wingate by Windham in Florence, Kentucky and had Papa John’s Pizza delivered.

The difference in our hotel stays from one night to the next was unbelievable, this was a wonderful find for us. The customer service was outstanding...they have an extra parking area a little away from the hotel but since it was a slow night they advised us we could stay where we were at the side of the parking lot where we could see our vehicle from our window. We felt safe and had a well needed resting night.

So glad that once this major drive is complete that we will be able to drive at a nice leisurely pace and enjoy ourselves with what we love to do, travel and sightsee but for now it’s drive, sleep and repeat for one more day.

We do make most, if not all of our reservations through Hotels.com and found it to be one of the best apps and website to use for our hotel stays. We have a budget to stay under $100 including taxes which so far we have been able to stay within that budget. That is also where we have been submitting our reviews of the places we stay. If any of you are traveling and using hotels this app is priceless…we have attempted to use many of the others but always return to Hotels.com because of the convenience and the great prices for some pretty sweet establishments. We highly recommend it over Priceline, Travelocity, Trivago, Hotel Tonight, and even TripAdvisor.

Our 4^th and final day found us stopping at a White Castle to begin the trip. Since we are in White Castle country we needed to get our fix…got our suitcase and plan to have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It was such a relief to finally arrive at the school to drop off the trailer and then the plan is to check into our hotel, rest and be back at the trailer in the morning to begin our first event. 

Things did not go exactly as planned. Our first weekend hotel stay was made by PepWear and it was not a good fit. Once the event was over and we pack up it will usually be after midnight and we first noticed that parking the trailer was going to be an issue but it might have been something we could have worked around but then the huge red flags were abundant. The room they gave us was located WAY in the back…to get to it we had to go down a few steps through a side door, then into a dark hall and down more steps, then down a ramp and another dark hall to our room which was on the first floor and had a broken screen door which faced a brick wall and some broken concrete. We had passed several broken and ripped screen doors, shady characters smoking outside on the patios, and too many empty beer cans for us to feel safe to return after the event on Saturday night so we went back to the desk and cancelled our stay.

Now to find another hotel in the area when there was a Sunday Pittsburgh Steelers game in the immediate area was not a fun thing to do. We finally found and booked at the Extended Stay which by then was way over our budget but because of the situation we were given approval for the stay. We learned never again to have anybody else book our rooms, we do it ourselves now since we have parking needs and especially our safety needs as well. Now to be fair we were told by PepWear during training that if that situation ever happened on our arrival to do exactly as we did since our safety is a priority to them too.

The set up and the event was going really nice, until about 7pm when the rain threat came and it was a major downpour that dampened our sales and everything else but we made it through and are looking forward to doing the next few events on our own and hopefully the weather will be more cooperative.

Getting back to our room at about 1am on Sunday, we slept for a few hours then got up to work on our paperwork, a few hours later we were ready for lunch. Primanti Bros was located next door and it was a fantastic choice. The sandwiches were loaded with tender meat, scrumptious coleslaw and French fries and we both soon realized we do not like fries on our sandwiches, the side of onion rings had a different coating that was delicious.

Left Monroeville, Pennsylvania Monday to begin our second week which will include much more sight-seeing and we will be updating our blog along the way…

For more photos, check out our Google + Web Albums.