Bill's First Big (post-retirement) Adventure

Penny the Prius and I rolled into our DC back yard at 5:30 this afternoon. Guess what: no snow! It was actually snowing wetly and 34° as we left the hotel this morning and rained hard several times along the way, but the weather wasn't too bad overall. The best part: the mountains in western Maryland, that in the past have been almost impassable with snow when it was just raining in the low country, were snow-covered but as I climbed the temperature barely dropped into the thirties. Very different from the Sierra and the Rockies!

Summing up

I left Feb. 16 and returned today, March 14, one day short of a full month. I put almost 7,500 miles on Penny the Prius and on myself - here's the trip odometer I had zeroed as we pulled out last month..


Here are my westbound and return itineraries, as two images because Mapquest has a limit of 10 waypoints on a route:

So what did I get out of this?

• I spent wonderful times with more than a dozen of the people who matter most to me in this world (and who in my opinion don't live too far north for winter driving). Thank you all for giving me some of your time. If you're one of the ones I missed due to illness or other commitments, let's try to get together another time. Northerners, your turn will come in a couple of months.
• Almost every day produced one or more moments of sheer delight, whether "I'm actually doing this!" or "Did they actually do that?" or even just "Penny/the GPS/being retired is so cool!" Many days also provided something to thrill my taste buds, as you've seen.
• I drove for the first time ever in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas*, New Mexico, Arizona*, southern California*, Nevada, Utah*, Wyoming, and Nebraska. (* I've traveled in past years to Dallas, San Antonio, Scottsdale, San Diego, and Santa Monica on business but had no car and scarcely saw the world outside my meeting rooms.)
• I had the fun of writing this blog, sharing what I enjoyed the most and thought might interest some of you. Those of you who posted comments or sent them by e-mail made it seem worth the doing, and I'll always be able to call up these memories by rereading the blog.
• I bought exactly one souvenir: this New Orleans Saints cap, because when I left snowy DC protection from the sun was the farthest thing from my mind.

As soon as possible I'll post all my favorite photos with captions on a photo-sharing site. I'll e-mail the link to those of you on my list and will also post it on this blog.

This may be the last post until I start my warm-weather trip. We'll see.