10,000 Miles Lessons Learned

Traveling with a dog has a high cost unless you stay at La Quinta Inn & Suites. They are a pet friendly hotel chain with nice rooms, complementary breakfast, and reasonable cost with no additional pet fee. They appear to be growing and successful throughout the nation. At other hotels, we’ve seen pet fees as high as $75 per night and it’s often difficult to find the pet policy and cost for a hotel. In Natchez, MS, Kiva slept in the truck, which worked well because the temperature was perfect, warm, but not hot, and the truck is home to Kiva, so she wasn’t stressed.

It is better to book your place to stay online. For a while, we were dropping in wherever we ended up, but the front desk prices can be considerably higher than what you find online. I don’t like using booking.com. The communication with the hotel sites is terrible, but the hotels will still honor the great booking.com price, so it is worth booking ahead and figuring it out at the front desk. Be mentally prepared for your reservation to not have been seen by the hotel staff. Be ready to provide your online booking information.

Check reviews before you book. Keeping in mind that sometimes guests get into a rant about something completely unimportant, they give you a good idea about what to expect. I look for the word “clean” to repeat itself in a number of reviews. It’s over for me if there are problems with bathroom cleanliness or maintenance needs to be improved. The friendliness of staff is not as big of an indicator for me, but I have noticed that places that respond to reviews tend to value customer service.

Check restaurant reviews to find places to eat. Saves time and fuel driving around and the reviews have proven to be accurate.

Get a fuel finder app, Dan uses Gas Buddy, for the best gas and diesel prices near you.

It might be faster on an Interstate, but it’s both more interesting and much more peaceful on the smaller highways. We’re on the Natchez Trace right now. There’s barely any traffic and it’s like an ongoing Sunday country drive with huge trees, wild turkeys, and interesting historic markers.

Friends and family encourage you to visit, but that doesn’t mean they want you to stay with them, so most nights we have spent $100 or more on lodging. That adds up fast. I thought it might get cheaper out of Canada and further south, but $100 has been the standard for budget accommodations.

Things will work out exactly the way they are supposed to even if you don’t see it at the beginning. Problems and delays tend to resolve themselves into opportunities. No need to get stressed when challenges arise.

There are A LOT of cows and horses in the United States! Science note: they are likely our biggest methane producers.

Places have a feeling to them. There are many beautiful, friendly places of character in the United States. Equally, there are many places overtaken by chain restaurants, hotels, and shopping centers that feel sterile and sometimes seedy. The drug problem in the United States is noticeable. We’ve seen people that clearly look ravaged by meth.

The earth is overpopulated and overtouristed. However, for some reason, people tend to gravitate to the cities, so it is not difficult to find quiet places with the opportunity to get to know locals.

Before we started the journey, I expected to find evidence of a divided country. Instead, I’ve seen brilliant management and teamwork among colleagues of many races and genders with all sorts of races and genders of bosses. I’ve seen casual conversations among people of different races and genders as they share breakfast in hotels or dine in restaurants. Over six weeks of travel, I’ve witnessed zero discrimination. Zero. I haven’t seen anyone excluded from services or participation because of his/her gender, color of skin, or religion. I haven’t even seen anyone distancing themselves or any kind of imposed or self-imposed segregation. I didn’t even get any feeling of tension or disapproval.

If there was anything I noticed, it was that the people of the United States, while consistently friendly to one another regardless of gender and race, do not trust the media. The television was on in the hotel breakfast areas and the people sitting nearby often seemed to glare at the screen. More than once, people confided either to me or to the people around me, who often were of different races and genders, that what they were being fed by the media was a lie and they were sick of it. Conservative, liberal, it didn’t matter. There was the same distrust and disgust across the board.

From Missoula to Yuma to Albuquerque to Oklahoma City to Natchez to Charlotte, we’ve seen a big part of the country, but we haven’t been in the Midwest or on the coasts. I can’t say anything conclusively, but I can say that we didn’t see or experience discrimination, and the only frustration we witnessed was with the media.

Divided America? I witnessed only unity.

And if there is any problem in America, it is drugs. The hazard ravages of drug addiction were apparent everywhere and residents spoke of the way it is encroaching on their towns and cities.

And if there is a problem in the world, it is overdisposalism. How’s that for a new word? So many people making so much waste every single day is beginning to pile up and it won’t be long before there is nowhere for it to go. I hope some brilliant young people are working on a solution. Could it be jetted out into space without creating another problem?

There’s at least one organization, probably more, working on ocean clean-up. I’m just learning about 4ocean, which is doing boat and beach clean-ups around the world. Check them out at 4ocean

UPDATE: I did see and sense self-imposed segregation in Charleston, South Carolina.