Karen at Outpost Mavarin has the Weekend Assignment...
Weekend Assignment #203: If you had the time, money, housesittter, etc. to pack up right now and drive somewhere out of town for a few days, where would you go, if anywhere? Note I said driving, so wherever you pick should be in driving distance.
If I'd had the time, money, etc., you can probably guess where I would have gone this weekend...and the whole week or so before. If you can't guess, take a peek at the next four or five posts below this one. Yes, that's right, Daytona Beach, Florida, for Speedweeks and the 500. Of course, without tickets and reservations made months and months in advance, I probably would have been reduced to begging scalpers for a deal and sleeping in my car or camping out in the infield for days. And it would have been heaven.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say we're not talking about this specific weekend. My answer would probably be the same or maybe a little further south in Florida. Someplace nice and warm. You might remember, I don't like winter.
Chattanooga is within a day's driving of most of the eastern half of the United States. One day in the not-too-distant future, I hope to take a little jaunt to see the Mississippi River, perhaps around the Vicksburg area. I'd also like to visit some of the Virginia Civil War battlefields and Washington, D.C. Savannah and the Georgia coastal islands also sound nice.
Extra Credit: last time you got out of town for non-business reasons, what was your mode of transportation?
Driving. With the way airline travel is since 9/11, I wouldn't even attempt to get on a plane unless it was absolutely, no-way-around-it necessary.
5 comments:
Winter? Do you have winter in Tennessee? ;)
I'm with you about the air travel thing. I haven't been on a plane in eight years, and it's very possible I will never board one again. Air travel in the early 21st century is just an overall obnoxious experience, and I am really going to have to want to get somewhere in a hurry (sort of...) to opt for it.
We don't have the intense sort of winters like they have up north. Bitterly cold temps, teens or lower, don't last long. Our snowfalls are also few and far between.
Our winters are more of an irritant, where you have to check the weather before you head out the door. It might be in the 60's for two or three days in a row, then not make it out of the 30's for several days. Or, like last year, we might have a week or two of temps in the 70's in February, then a week or two of highs in the 30's in March. That really messed the trees and plants up.
My big memory of Daytona Beach, back when we visited my grandmother in Florida circa 1965, was that cars were allowed to drive on the beach itself. Do you know whether they still do that?
It's been a few years since I've been to Daytona Beach, but the last time I was there they still allowed cars to cruise the beach. I think there is a fee (maybe $5) to take your car on the beach.
Interestingly, that hard-packed sand was where some of the earliest automobile land-speed records were broken. Cars would start at Ormond Beach and head south. As speeds increased, it became more and more difficult to slow down enough to safely negotiate the pilings under the Daytona Beach pier. Drivers eventually headed west to the Bonneville Salt Flats to set their records.
Oh, yeah! I remember camping out in the infield. Whoo-hooo. I'm with you.
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