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Bob and I have had a lovely, relatively relaxing week or so since leaving North Carolina (if you don’t count a car fix for us and another for my mom). We visited a couple of new university towns and had good visits with my aunt in Chicago, my mom in Janesville, WI, and an uncle and aunt in Evansville, WI.

We left our car in Janesville and took the regional bus to O’Hare yesterday and then the metro to a nearby hotel so we wouldn’t have to worry about any bus issues this morning. After my last run for a few days, we had a relaxing morning at the hotel before we headed back to the airport via the free hotel shuttle.

We have walked most of the terminals and are now waiting to board to begin our 31 hour journey to Adelaide, Australia. We have a 4.5 flight to Vancouver, Canada, a 4.5 hour layover there, a 15.5 hour flight to Sydney, Australia, a 5 hour layover there, and then finally a 2 hour flight to Adelaide. Praying for some ability to sleep and lots of patience (prayers needed for both).

We are heading to Australia for a housesit in Melbourne, but prior to that, we will be traveling to see more of the country as part of an early celebration of Bob’s upcoming 60th birthday in August, and I’ll be running a marathon outside of Adelaide on 5/28 (fingers crossed).

Beth’s hometown is Janesville, Wisconsin, and we made it here about 3pm going with Plan B given our car troubles. The auto shop did call us earlier than we expected yesterday around 1pm. I went and got the car and we drove to West Lafayette, Indiana (Plan B), as there was a nice hotel on the University of Purdue campus.

The Union Hotel was really nice and feels a lot like The Graduate hotels. We explored it and the attached Purdue Memorial Union. The Union was quiet, as classes were done for the semester. We grabbed some snacks for dinner at a nearby Target and headed back to the room.

The hotel gave us a free upgrade, so before dinner in or room, we had a couple free Vesper Cocktails and a five-piece shrimp cocktail. The photos below are from last evening and this morning on my walkabout while Beth was running.

This morning after checking out, we drove to Beth’s aunt’s place in Chicago and had a great lunch and good visit before fighting with the Chicago traffic on our way to Janesville.

Yesterday we had about a 7 hour drive from just outside Asheville, North Carolina, to Bloomington, Indiana. We left early, as I wanted to run on Bloomington’s rail trail when we got in and then we planned to go out for dinner. Our drive started off with fog in the mountains, which was awesome to look at, but not as fun for driving through. After that though, we had a good drive through North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

Once we hit Indiana, we hit a reroute from GPS, then road detours, a stoppage for roadwork on some back country road that was down to one lane. Still, we were on track for about a 1:30 pm arrival. I think we even hit that, but we ended up arriving at an auto repair shop a couple blocks from the hotel (thank you Google Maps), as our charging indicator light had come on. The car manual seemed to indicate that meant that the battery was not being charged and to definitely not shut the car off. Luckily, we were just about 25 miles outside of Bloomington at this point.

We left the car at the shop. They said they would look at it and let us know. We walked with our bags the two blocks to the hotel and checked in. The good news is we had a lovely afternoon. I went for my run and was super impressed with the rail trail, which runs from the downtown area and then out in both directions. I ran from 2ish to 3ish on a Monday, and it was being well used at that time. Bob walked around the downtown area, which is quite compact and very close to Indiana University (where I was also accepted for graduate school but ended up choosing Texas instead).

The auto shop closed at 6. When we still hadn’t heard at 5:30, I called them. They were still busy but said they would call back. Bob got the call a little after 6, right as we were being seated for what turned out to be a great Indian dinner. They would have to fix the alternator, yada, yada, and it should be done by 4:00 pm tomorrow (now today). We were planning to leave this morning, but we have the time to play with, so Plan B it is. It’s not a cheap fix, but cars are worse than useless if they aren’t working, so we definitely want the fix.

Some photos of Bloomington. We stopped here to stay at The Graduate Hotel, an international chain of hotels that we are fond of. They tend to invoke the flavor of the local area and the local university in particular.

At about 6 pm on Sunday, May 14, our homeowner returned to the house in Boiling Springs. We had a great catch up with her and our helpful neighbor before heading off for a short hour plus drive down the road to get a head start on our Monday drive.

Sunday was the end of a lovely 4 month housesit, our longest to date. It was fun to vicariously see Italy, Paris, and Vienna on our homeowner’s travel and/or run adventures. She was so generous during our stay, and with a marathon completed in every US state, she’s an inspiration for my running.

We had a bonus friend on this housesit who lived just a couple of doors down and was always helpful even through a difficult time in her own family.

We loved exploring the area trails, sites, and meeting a number of locals, especially at the YMCA that we joined. It is a lovely area with gorgeous tree covered hills and mountains. It calls for further exploration sometime. We find that everywhere we go. We now know what we didn’t know.

The sweet, cheeky Cooper will remain in our hearts. He was such a good boy, but with just a bit of sass that kept us entertained. There is nothing happier than a dog doing a happy dance, and Cooper’s happiest dance was knowing he was getting to come with you in the car. Walks were nice but going in the car was better. (Of course, there was a sweet happy dance when he reunited with his person on Sunday as well.).

He also loves to be under a blanket. I think he’d be happy under one in the middle of the desert. And then when he starts to peak out he looks like this wise little Yoda creature who is about to impart some wisdom.

He enjoyed walks anywhere, but if we were in the neighborhood, the likelihood increased that he’d find something of such interest that he’d have to sit and watch. If you wanted to continue with the walk, you had to find a way to coax him back up or pick him up for a bit to move on.

I could go on about his speed in squirrel chasing in the backyard, his cuddling with me near dinner time (to make sure he got fed), his joy about bedtime, etc. Suffice to say we were honored to care for and get to know him. Cheers and best wishes to Linda, Cooper, and Marja! They have definitely written another chapter in our travel story.

Bob and I are back in blogging business. Still researching a final solution but have an interim measure in place that will keep us blogging with photos for awhile.

Our time in Boiling Springs will end this Sunday night but before that, we were able to meet up with friends from Austin last Sunday, as they were in Asheville visiting former work colleagues. We met up at a couple wineries in between Asheville and Boiling Springs. It was a great visit. We caught up on their news, news from Austin, as well as the activities they had been doing around Asheville.

Today, Bob and I went to Spartanburg, South Carolina, for a tour of the BMW plant there. It’s a popular tour, as we purchased tickets a month or so ago, and today was the only open option before we leave. The campus is beautiful, and we learned a number of fun BMW facts.

1, BMW stands for Bavarian Motor Works. Not being car people, we did not know this before our visit.

2, The Spartanburg campus is currently at 1.2 million square feet, but they will be expanding.

3, The time it takes to create one car, from the 400 pieces of separate metal until it leaves the lot is 28 hours. The plant currently makes 1,500 cars a day and made over 416,300 cars last year.

4, The plant started with about 700 employees and now has 12,000.

The most impressive part of the tour was seeing all of the robotic systems in action, and watching the staff guide the robotic arms or do the manual installations that need to be done. The planning of the entires process and the development of all of the robotic tools seems impressive. I also liked the fact that staff have help cords that they can pull to get assistance from a Service Line Supervisor. The cord doesn’t sound an alarm, but rather a song that each Supervisor selects so that they can tell who is needed. No photos were allowed during the tour, so the photos below are from the outside and inside of the Visitor’s Center.

It has been a bit of an unusual day today. It started with a transformer going out near the house this morning, which caused the electricity to go out. This caused considerable consternation for Beth who was working online and who also had not yet had her coffee. Bob to the rescue for both. First showing Beth how to set up a hotspot with her phone to allow her to finish her job and then running her to Starbucks for the coffee fix. Happy wife, happy life as they say.

After breakfast we headed to the Galilee Church Road Trailhead for the Foote Trail. This trail is part of the Gateway Trail System that we had walked a couple of months ago. At that time, we had walked the three shorter trails in the park near the quarry but had seen the the park trailhead for the 4.5 mile Foote Trail. The Galilee Church Road Trailhead is at the far end of the trail and is located in a rural neighborhood. A deer shot across the road as we were nearing the trailhead, which could have caused any number of unpleasant issues, if we had hit it, but Bob saved the day again.

While we had a great walk, the day ended as it started with a hiccup that we’re still trying to sort out. We have maxed out our media storage for our current level of our blog app. The next level up is significantly more, so we’re seeing if we can make any changes within the current level before changing our membership status. Hope to be back in blogness soon!

First of all, how the heck can it be May already?! Our time in North Carolina is quickly coming to an end, and we’re still checking things out. We will leave much to come back and do.

The other night on the news, which is based out of Charlotte, we saw a story that covered the approval of a Social District, in Gastonia, North Carolina, a satellite city of Charlotte, with a population of about 80,000. The city is trying to revive business in the downtown sector and has created a six block Social District, which will allow adults to buy a drink (in a special cup) at a participating bar/restaurant, and then walk with it throughout the designated district. The designated hours for the district are from 11 am to 11 pm daily, except for Sunday when it ends at 10 pm.

We began our stroll around the district about noon, not to participate, but just to see what the area had to offer. We had a lovely walk on a beautiful day, but there didn’t seem to be much foot traffic, and really very few open businesses. Only one retail shop that we saw, otherwise, just a few bars and restaurants, but hopefully, the effort (and the construction of residential units underway) will attract new businesses.

After a rainy last couple of days, we wanted to get out of the house and see something new. So we ventured to Chimney Rock, a small community right next to the town of Lake Lure, which we had visited earlier. According to Google, the village population is 140. It is basically a tourist destination for people wanting to visit Chimney Rock State Park as well as enjoy the quaint three blocks of shops, restaurants, a children’s amusement park, a brewery, and a winery situated in a lovely area with mountains on either side. It also has a short but scenic river walk along the Broad River.

Luckily for us, the drive to Chimney Rock went through Lake Lure, so we got to see the lake at a much fuller level than when we had visited earlier. It was much prettier.

We elected not to pay the $17 apiece to go into the state park and just perused the Main Street of the village of Chimney Rock.

The following photos are from the short Riverwalk which runs at the base of the mountain with the state park and behind many of the restaurants, so lots of the restaurants advertise river views for their dining.

Yesterday, Bob and I took Cooper back to the Broad River Trail for another hike full of smells, and today, Bob and I headed back to Crowder Mountain to hike another trail to a different outlook. The first time, we hiked the Pinnacle Trail from the Visitor’s Center for views in multiple directions. Today, we drove to the Linwood Access to the park to do a loop trail that got us to an west facing overlook that had great views of the surrounding countryside, including the Veronet Winery that we visited a few weeks ago.

This trail, while unsigned at the start as well as the top, was the busiest trail we have been on. Luckily, we met a friendly local who confirmed we were on the correct trail and that we would have a 300+ step climb to the top.

Bob and I had company this weekend when Bob’s brother Eric flew his plane down from Alexandria, Virginia to the local airport for a visit. He gave us a heads up, and we cleared his stay with our homeowner before his arrival. He gave Bob the name of an app that allowed him to track his plane’s progress. We headed out to the airport in time Friday afternoon to watch his arrival and assist a bit with unloading and then covering the plane in anticipation of Saturday’s storm/rain.

From the airport, we drove up to Tryon to the International Equestrian Center. There was a dressage event this weekend but nothing horse-related happened while we were there, but we got to show him around. Then we headed to the Mountain Brook Winery that we had visited a few weeks ago to catch up over a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers. Bob made dinner after we got back, and Cooper the dog made a new friend.

On Saturday, Bob and Eric went to the Shelby Cafe to introduce Eric to livermush and then onto Cowpens State Park to view the film of the battle and history there and walk the Battlefield Trail. The rain ended about 2 pm just in time for the Boiling Springs Webbstock, which closed down part of Main Street for music, vendors, face painting, etc. It turned out to be a great temperature and weather for it. We enjoyed perusing the area before heading to El Acapulco, the local Mexican restaurant for dinner.