Thursday January 12th 2017

Today was an all around improvement on yesterday. The weather was sun all day in the high 70s. I was up and moving a little quicker than the last few days and I got out of camp to complete some needed maintenance tasks on the car.

After my morning coffee I continued with my internet research for this years travels. I haven’t made any reservations yet, but I have a better idea how my travels between here and Arizona will go. My current plan will be to spend five or six nights in the New Orleans area and another longer stop in San Antonio or the Texas hill country.

I’ve also been working on refining my plans for the rest of the year. The general plan is to proceed from Arizona to Las Vegas. It will have been almost two years since my last visit to Las Vegas. Since the early 2000s I’ve been taking taking one or two trips a year to Vegas. From there I can either go north through Nevada toward Reno on into Western Oregon and Washington over to Idaho and back down into Utah or the counter clockwise equivalent.

The overall plan is to stay between the western slop of the Rockies and the eastern slop of the coastal ranges. I need to figure it out some of the details quickly so I can make reservations for the holiday weekends and the heavy tourist areas like Glacier National Park.

This afternoon’s primary task was getting the oil and transmission fluid in the Honda CR-V changed. I’ve used the Valvoline Instant Oil change chain for many years. There happen to be two in Bradenton Fl to chose from. The challenge was the heavy traffic. The good thing was their computer systems knew who I was and the price was consistent to what I paid in New Hampshire. On my trip back north last spring, the Valvoline shop in Maryland was much higher. Where the next oil change will take place is another one of life’s little mysteries.

Pelicans in the Marina.

The oil and transmission fluid change took about half an hour. During that time the traffic got even worst. I had hopes of taking in a movie, but I missed the showing time because of the traffic. To fill the time I drove out to Bradenton Beach to check up on the Gulf of Mexico. It was still there.