Road Trip

I just got back from a week-long road trip to visit colleges with my son and husband. We made sure that each hotel we stayed at had free hot breakfast in the morning, and a gym and pool available to us. Sadly, we only used the pool once, and I didn't use the "hotel fitness room" at all, although my husband went down there a few times. 

I brought a yoga mat and spent a few minutes most mornings doing stretches and a few core exercises. My sciatica didn't bother me too much with all the distance driving, and there were some days when we walked for hours. Other days not so much. Through it all, I didn't need any bug spray, which was a pleasant surprise. But I seem to be allergic to something, maybe the hotel body wash or shampoo, which I sampled out of curiosity. My throat has a patch of angry irritation but no bug bite to blame and I'm slathering it with a variety of itch creams with varying degrees of appeasement.

Over eight days, we traveled hundreds of miles and stayed at five different hotels to cut our drive times down to a manageable 2 hours or less. Having scrambled eggs and oatmeal (with walnut, almond, cranberry and/or raisin toppings) with orange juice and good coffee goes a long way to start a busy morning. Some days the scramble eggs were replaced with veggie frittatas ot spinach/cheese crustless mini-quiches. I brought (and drank) a bottle of low-sodium V-8 juice, all my vitamins, and my eye drops. 

We drank lots of bottled water because while all the schools had fountains and refill stations, not all the water tasted good. The same with the hotels. The worst one was in Binghamton. While the staff was pleasant, the hotel itself seemed to be on the bottom of the list for supplies like towels, toilet paper, pillows... they even had a sign posted in the elevator asking patrons to be patient about the towel situation. Other hotels in our stay were much better. (My husband travels a lot so he had access to points for this chain.)

We had dinner at different restaurants, the most memorable being Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester NY. And most of the time I couldn't finish the meal and had to bring leftovers back to the room fridge. And left them there because we never had time to return to the hotel the next day once we were on our way to the next college tour. So, no lunch. Except for the last school that actually ended their campus tour with burgers, chicken, fruit salad and cookies! 

Other schools did give us SWAG bags with notebooks and water bottles. After all our registered tours were over, we became tourists and went to a few museums, like the Iroquois-Seneca Museum, which we happened to drive by one day and thought "Hey! Let's check this out." Our visit to the Corning Museum of Glass, however, was planned and fabulous. But now, we're tired.

11 July 2022 --13,816 steps

12 July 2022
Hotel Tuesday: --14,738 steps
Crunches 60
Piriformis/Hip/Pencil Stretch
60 Dead Bugs
1-leg hip thrusts 10 each
Elbow Plank 60s
Quick Child’s Pose
Cat stretch 12x
Fire Hydrants 25 x 2
Bird Dogs 60s x 2
Child’s Pose
Push-Ups 25
Air Squats 25
Shoulder stretch
Eye yoga

 13 July 2022 --1,477 steos

14 July 2022  --11,854 steps

15 July 2022
Bare Min Friday --6,605 steps
Piriformis/Hip/Pencil Stretch
30 Dead Bugs
1-leg hip thrusts 10 each
Elbow Plank 60s
Quick Child’s Pose
Cat stretch 12x
Fire Hydrants 25 x 2
Bird Dogs 60s x 2
Swim at 10:30 pm

Saturday July 16
Skipped core/stretching to visit Corning Museum of Glass: --8,325 steps