Tales from the O.C.: Back In a Familiar Place

In what has become an odd trend, Heather and I both woke up a minute before 5am. What's odd is that we'd never be up that early on a work day. I guess it's the excitement of an adventure that has us looking forward to making the most of a day. We spent a few more minutes in bed scouting the day's weather forecast which looked quite optimistic.

We left the hotel in Windsor after 7am headed for the border where we were asked more than the normal amount of questions. However, we passed without a hitch. Finding I-75 proved to be a bit challenging but nothing that our GPS couldn't handle. Before leaving we made a decision to have breakfast outside of Detroit. The place where we stopped was a nice little family restaurant in Luna Pier, Michigan. Heather had pecan pancakes with link sausages and I had the ultimate omelet with hash browns. Upon receiving our orders we swapped sausages for hash browns.

Gander's Family Restaurant in Luna Pier.

Continuing our trip we made stops every hour or so for either gas or refreshments. We didn't encounter any slowdowns all the way to a rest stop in Monroe, Ohio. There, Heather took off her heated vest and jacket liner as the day was getting warmer. I chose to keep all my layers on as the ride was going well and I wanted to keep going. I quickly came to regret that decision as 15 minutes later we got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Cincinnati beginning exactly 4.5 miles from the Ohio-Kentucky border. Within seconds I was sweating from wearing too much clothing. A biker driving an F-150 came up beside us and yelled something about a car crash holding things back but we didn't see anything so it must have been just volume of traffic going from Ohio to Kentucky. The pace picked up once in Kentucky but the volume was still so high that Heather and I became separated. A small degree of confusion of panic ensued but cooler heads prevailed and we made it safely to a scheduled stop in Florence.

Ice cream stop in Georgetown, Kentucky.

We assessed the situation and also discussed our options going forward. We started to talk about where to stop for the night. Our goal was to make it to London, Kentucky which is only 40 miles from Tennessee. From Florence our stops became more frequent as fatigue was setting in. We finally agreed to stop in Richmond, Kentucky and decide if we wanted to continue another 40 minutes to London. But then we noticed dark clouds on the horizon and decided that we'd spend the night at the Best Western in Richmond, the same hotel where we were last year at a VROC rally.