Coast-to-Coast the Adventure Begins!

Most Loopers start their adventures somewhere along the Intracoastal Waterway or great rivers of the US. Ours started last week when we traveled 2667 miles from our home in San Pedro, California to our daughter's home in Ft Myers, Florida. Between furniture for our daughter and enough supplies to, hopefully not, sink our new boat, our SUV and trailer were packed to the point we could barely fit another piece of paper inside.  After a 10-day COVID delay, we pulled out in the wee dark hours of the morning to start our long 4 days of driving. The trip was mostly uneventful, other than the fact that we had a flat tire outside of Phoenix on the first day. We made it off the freeway just in time for the tire to completely deflate. After unloading half the car to access the jack, we discovered that it was absolutely useless. While waiting for AAA with an estimated 2 hour arrival time, Rob called our Sierra Veterinary Medical Association ski buddy, Tom, who we knew lived somewhere in the Phoenix area. With a good stroke of luck, Tom's desert hacienda was less than a  mile away from where we were stuck! Five minutes later he pulled up in his big pick-up with a floor jack in the back. Having no room for a flat tire in the back of our car, Tom threw the deflated useless piece of rubber in the back of his truck and off we went to find a new tire. We were back on the road after a relatively short three hour delay, and a fresh reminder of how great it is to have good friends! With 140,000 miles on the car and a flat-tire induced sense of vulnerability, we carried on with a sense of foreboding waiting for the next calamity to happen. Fortunately, the travel gods were with us and after 40+ hours of driving we pulled safely into our daughter's driveway. Along the way we discovered - The I-10 is pretty flat and gets progressively greener as you head east, the waffle makers in all of the Holiday Inn Expresses are broken, and California seems to be the only state where cars pulling trailers are limited to 55 mph. 

The afternoon before our departure, our best buddies put together a sunset bon-voyage party for us! We are so blessed to have the friends and neighbors that we do. We will miss them all!