Travel Day - day one

So we're on our way to Quiltcon which is in Tennesee. Eight of us have rented a house near the convention center - four of us decided to drive. The other four are flying down at various times.

At the designated time of 8:30 we were leaving my house. Ronda driving, Laura as navigator and Shelly and myself just hanging out in the back seat.

The unfortunate thing is that we had a wee bit of snow the night before and I did get part of the driveway shoveled, and it was snowing as we drove. But the roads were good so it wasn't an issue. We did have snow for about half of the drive - well until we hit somewhere in mid-Ohio.

How did the chatty Cathy's make out at the border crossing? They did pretty well, but the border guard was chatty herself and knew a thing or two about quilts. The moment she knew we were going to a quilt show, she wanted to know if we had supplies. Well, not exactly since I have a fully stocked sewing room in the car complete with a sewing machine. But she didn't need to know that. Were we going to be selling quilts? Definitely NOT even though we had quilts in the car.

All in all, it was pretty uneventful and we were on our way. We had done a pit stop at the duty-free which is just before the border. I think we each got a Tim's where no one won anything on their cups. Or if they did, no one said anything.

The drive was pretty uneventful which was disappointing considered that Ronda has a new toy in her car - a dash cam. Thankfully there were no incidents of crazy driving to report. That was a good thing.

We stopped for lunch at Wendy's. Good grief - I can't even remember which town that was in. Oh - I think that was Erie, PA. They have a new salad called The Harvest which was pretty decent. Topped the tank up with gas to be most efficient with our time. Switched drivers so Laura was now driving and Ronda was navigating and we were off.

Now navigating isn't really that challenging of a job since you just have to follow the GPS on Ronda's phone. I believe we're using Google Maps. No issues. Very little construction on the road. Another bonus. And of course - big highways all the way. Loads of truck traffic though.

Our next stop was the Joann's in Columbus, Ohio. I had read about this store a while back. It's a new concept that they are trying. With a Maker Space in the middle of the store. Oh my - it looked inviting. I could fill that will sewists any day. They also had a mid arm that you could rent and other neat tools to have fun with. A Cricut, some kind of 3-D printer thing - I'm not sure. The maker space was empty when we were there.

Then they have people who will fix your garments for you. A multi-needle embroidery machine and a whole lot more stuff. It was all done in white and lime green. Very cool. Of course, it has the usual stuff you would find at Joann's. I was very good. I did have a bolt of fabric in my hand that had bicycles on it and then decided that I didn't need more fabric with bicycles and put the bolt back.

I found something that I thought I would like - a set of Inktense blocks. These are similar to the Inktense pencils, but like charcoal sketching blocks to help cover larger areas. The set was $35. I thought I could manage that price. Then I remembered Joann's coupons. Oh my - I found a 60% off coupon so I paid $16 in total for the Inktense set of 12 blocks.  Score!!!!!

We switched drivers again, so Laura and I were in the back, Shelly driving and Ronda navigating. And then we were off on the road towards Cincinnati. That was about 2 more hours away. We were about 24 miles from the city but had to stop for gas. We were going to stop there for the night but decided it was best to get through Cincinnati at night and avoid the morning traffic. We planned to stop just on the outskirts. Well - obviously our geography of the US isn't that great because we crossed the bridge (Ohio River) only to find ourselves in Kentucky. We had to drive a wee bit further in order to find a hotel.

All these cities have HUGE baseball stadiums and right beside them - HUGE football stadiums. It's crazy.

So now we're in Kentucky. The next state is Tennessee. We saw a lone Motel 8 off to the side of the road with a few restaurants around. Let's just say that the entrance to the Motel 8 isn't exactly in a convenient spot. After locating the entrance, we made it to the office where it must have taken 15 minutes to get checked in. Not too fast around here!! I think we interrupted her watching the Baking competition on TV.

Then a late dinner. Not thrilled with the late dinner, but couldn't be helped. Oh, I have my little bag of illegal (crossing the border) snacks, that no one needed to know the details of when we crossed. Nothing huge, but there were almonds and apples in that bag. However, the crossing guard did NOT ask if we had any of that stuff so technically we never lied.

Back to the hotel where upon entering our rooms for the first time, we discovered that the heat was turned OFF. The rooms were like ice boxes as it was minus 2 outside. Good grief!!!! 

I jumped into bed with all my clothes on - I was frozen. And Shelly has short pants for PJs. I'm not sure how she survived. Well, it's morning now and finally toasty warm, but I sure could have used those quilts in the car.

Speaking of those quilts, technically one of them is no longer a quilt. I took the one that was hand quilted - the green/cream one and I ripped it apart. No - I removed the basting and all the hand quilting from the quilt. The person used percale sheeting and those stitches were teeny tiny. It took hours. See - I'm busy even in a car with nothing else to do!!!  It was a good task to do in the car. I'd have been bored out of my mind otherwise. Well, we did entertain ourselves with stories for a good part of the way and a phone call from Carol helped to pass more time.

I picked some of the threads out - but that will have to wait. I think it's going to be my turn to drive this morning since I didn't drive yesterday.

It's almost time to hit the road again. We're supposed to be encountering rain today and it's supposed to be quite wet while we're here. No worries - we have about 5 umbrellas in the car and two of us at least have rain boots.

Only one detour yesterday and that was because someone wasn't following the GPS. No worries - it didn't add any time to the trip. I think we just went left around a city instead of right.

On that note, I'm out of here.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!