Hello from North Carolina!

We left NH at 6:20 AM (I know, a bit later than we hoped) but have made it all the way to Rocky Mount NC. The weather was great all the way to Richmond, when it started to rain just at dusk.  Somehow the building in the city seem to be all lit with lights outlining their shapes--not sure if that is a Christmas thing or a signature Richmond thing?

Traffic was a breeze until DC and below...I think there are MANY snowbords making their way south!

We made better time than we thought we would, so the hotel reservations I made (with pet-friendly Choice Hotels) got blown out of the water.  I had signed us up for their Choice Priviledges (free) program, though, and made one cell phone call and they canceled the ones we didn't need and found a new one further south--all with one phone call. The hotels aren't destinations, per se, but boy it was nice to have everything settled with one call.  They will be on our list for US road trips.

Maggie is the dream travel dog--sort of.  She won't eat her regular food, so is now on a hamburger diet.  She also has not done her business since leaving Bow.  This is in spite of our stopping in every single state to offer her the chance--I even jogged around a very elaborate rest stop just south of Quantico,VA.  Nothing!

We have given up and and are going to bed.

Chase, Bud and Maggie

PS...thanks to Lucy, we have been doing audio books to great success.  We started with Carl Hiasson's Skinny Dip, set in FL. We'll finish before South Carolina and then start on Stephen King's Duma Key.

Travels with Maggie

After a year of planning we're off to points south with Maggie tomorrow morning.  The Concord Monitor's Charlotte Thibault did this terrific artwork to illustrate the soup-to-nuts piece I did on putting the trip together. Read it at http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/229887/on-the-road-with-maggie.

As much as we will miss everyone (and that will be a LOT!), we're looking at the next three months as a sort of  "faux retirement." We'll have three months of leisure before returning home to our regular work routines for the rest of the year. Will we survive without doing bodily harm to each other?? Time will tell.

I'll still be writing for the Monitor a couple of times each month and will also be trying out the bloggin world right here. We're hoping for daily entries and photos...perhaps even along the three day drive down to the Florida Keys.

As of 1PM today, our 2011 KIA Sorento is packed, Maggie's seatbelt/harness contraption is installed and tested, we have 5 audiobooks downloaded to Bud's iTouch (amazingly, they'll play through our car speakers) and we're set to take off early tomorrow morning.