The Sandcastle

I woke up early this morning so had time to shower before the breakfast room closed. We like to take advantage of the breakfast since we feel like we pay a lot for the privilege of spending a few hours in their motel. We’ve been eating scrambled eggs every morning with various sides depending on that day’s offerings.

Once in the car and on the road, our GPS instructed us to, “continue 147 miles south on I-35.” Like I said before, hard to get lost on this trip. Unfortunately, that is not the end of this trip. That is just the next GPS information point: probably where I-35 splits into east and west again depending on whether you are going to Dallas or Fort Worth. We’ll be taking the Fort Worth leg.

I saw a license plate that read “367 WPM” and I thought, “Wow, that’s fast!” Well, I don’t know anyone who can write 367 words per minute; do you?

We went to Applebee’s for lunch because our daughter went to one in Spokane recently and raved about the dish she had. It wasn’t on the menu so I asked the server about it. He said it was on a specials menu so he could ask to have it made for me but he wasn’t getting good reviews about it. Rather than take a chance on staff here messing it up I decided to order something off the regular menu and wait for a better time and place to try the new one. That’s in line with my “never deliberately irritate the person fixing or serving your food” policy.

I’m so happy to finally see Austin showing up on the “distance to…” signs.  I am so ready to be there now.

What would you do to sleep in a comfortable bed while traveling? We decided to give Comfort Inn another chance. The pool is closed indefinitely. The pull rod is off one of the curtains. The toilet swivels; not just the seat, the whole thing. But, if all goes well to morrow we won’t have time to swim. We can still close the curtains. And the toilet doesn’t move while using it nor does it leak. Apparently, I am willing to put up with all that for a bed in which I can sleep. Plus this room has a table with two chairs in addition to a desk and sofa so we can bring food here to eat. And we have a frig and microwave for any leftovers. So, if we have to stay all weekend we can live here pretty comfortably. Since the A/C does work.

TTYL,

Linda

After spending a very hot night (our A/C didn’t work)  in a Comfort Inn in Lenexa, KS, we were up an at them even earlier this morning. But, because we ate the free breakfast in the hotel we still didn’t get on the road until shortly after  9 am.

Then our first stop was a gas station where Dave took a great photo. Unless we stop to buy a cord to download that picture, though, I can’t share it with you. In our hurry to get on the road we missed packing a few things. My minimalist self is wondering how much we really need them.

I love how quickly and kindly my new GPS accepts us not taking his recommended route. (We switched from the female voice to the male voice for more clarity and, apparently, the GPS became a “him” when we did.) He apparently did not want us to take the Kansas Turnpike so tried twice to send us an alternate route but when we got on I-35 south again anyway he adjusted one more time without announcing he was recalculating. This stretch of road has new asphalt and the traffic cones are still sitting alongside the pavement so he might have been tring to route us around construction work. There is a center line but no edge striping yet.

I do like the basic instructions for driving from Minneapolis, MN, to Austin, TX, though: get on I-35 south and drive about 1100 miles. You literally get on in Minneapolis and get off in Austin. With a few stops along the way, of course. So, if I decide to make the Texas Hill Country my winter destination I should never get lost on the commute. 🙂

We passed a kid’s play area that had a hay bale maze. It looked to me like the bales were tall enough that young kids would probably not be able to see over them but adults would. You could turn your kid loose to try to solve it but see to help them if they got frustrated. Great concept.

Once we actually got on the Turnpike at Emporia we understood our GPS’s intentions even more. There was fresh pavement there, too. Southbound was finished and northbound was almost done. So he was probably routing us around what still looks to him like construction. I wonder what will happen when we head back north again? In the meantime we should probably check to see what the setting is on the “avoid toll roads” option. For this trip, fast driving and multiple rest areas are more important than avoiding the $6 it will cost us at the end of this road.

My face hurts today. I don’t know if it’s my dust allergies from all the hours I am spending in this very dusty car, having spent the night in a strange bed, the air quality warning in KC, or the result of off-plan eating. Too many variables.

Which is something they warn you not do do on Day 31 of a Whole 30. Instead, they teach you how to reintroduce food groups one at a time so you can determine how YOU react to each group.

I know when I got off all dairy for three month years ago the first glass of milk after that gave me a massive headache. This is not that headache. This is a face ache. It’s all in my sinuses. Boy, is it!

We just passed two vehicles with license plates from Hawaii! Don’t see that often.

I think of Love’s as truck stops. We saw one today where the billboard called it a car stop. And they were right. I pity the poor truck driver not paying enough attention that tries to go there.

We’ve been very lucky with our arrival times in major metropolitan areas. We arrived in Oklahoma City apparently at the very beginning of their rush hour so we got through town without too much slow down. Tomorrow we should be going through Fort Worth at midday.

We are now at another Comfort in. We come here because I can sleep in their beds but we are not having a lot of luck otherwise. This time we checked into a room with a broken sofa. I wanted to sit with my feet up a while this evening so the broken sofa was not OK.  The woman at the front desk was nice but kept trying to move us to a more expensive room with the additional cost associated with that move. It’s their sofa that’s broken, not me. Finally she moved us into a room someone else had reserved and will put them in the one with the broken sofa. I hope they don’t mind. At least the A/C in this room works.

By the way, the guy did give us a $15 discount for the broken one last night. He wanted to know why we did’t call to report it. You tell me, if you walked into a room exhausted from a day’s travel in very high temperatures, kicked the A/C all the way down, and fell into bed, would you call the desk during the night to say, “It’s hot in here”? What are they going to do at that point? Send a repairman or move us to a different room in our sleepwear?

I am so glad it’s not hot in this room now. I plan to sleep better tonight. But, we still have to decide whether or not to go to Comfort Inn in Austin or to pick one of the other two more expensive chains that have beds I can sleep on. What would you do?

TTYL,

Linda

The plan was to leave home about 9 am so as to miss the rush hour traffic, drive about an hour south, then stop for breakfast. All went as planned.

We left home at 9:09 am; close enough to call it on time.

Our GPS gave us a route we would not have thought of ourselves which was wide open. We would have been caught in traffic without it.

We stopped at Cracker Barrel in Lakeville, MN, for breakfast and were thrilled to find a low carb section on their menu. We both order scrambled eggs with bacon and sliced tomato. I gave Dave two slices of my bacon in exchange for his two slices of tomato. Then I melted a little butter onto my eggs to help make up for the calories I gave away. The server brought us toast we hadn’t ordered but we had her take it right away again so I wouldn’t  be tempted to eat it. Yay me. So, we were pretty good. Except for our beverages but we won’t talks about those, OK?

Today’s stupid sighting: an open bed pickup truck with a spoiler on the top of it’s tailgate.

Today’s amusing sighting: “Mock ‘n’ Roll Trucking”. And another trucking company called “Smooth Operators, Inc”.

We drove through a front just north of Ames, Iowa, thus getting some of the 20% precipitation predicted for the area today. Fortunately, we didn’t have a buggy windshield so the wipers worked fine. We didn’t get enough rain to clean the car, though.

The temperature inside our car dropped, too. But that may have been because we lost our solar heat. Today that’s a good thing.

Jeri said I’m talking too much about food so I’m not going to tell you what we had for lunch. Yeah, right. That’s why I am not going to tell you. It has nothing to do with the choices we made. Right?

It was almost 8 pm when we pulled into the motel we chose for tonight. For us, that’s a very long day of driving. And we haven’t had supper yet. I wonder what choices we will make about that?

Too hot. Too tired. Going to bed.

TTYL,

Linda

 

One of the rules of the Whole 30 program is to weigh and measure yourself before starting then don’t do either again until the end of the program. Since our program got truncated Dave and I both weighed this morning. We each lost 5.5 pounds and I lost an inch off my waist which is the only measure either of us took. In six days! We were both pleasantly surprised by that as we neither had a clue we were losing that kind of weight.

Yes, this program is primarily about gaining health. But, for many of us, losing weight is a side benefit of that.

Yay!

TTYL,

Linda

It has now been a week since we made our shopping trip to the local co-op. Time to go again. But first, some meal planning.

I started by going to WellnessMama.com where I’ve signed up to try their meal planning system. We picked out five dinners we think we would be willing to cook and eat. You then tell the app how many people you are cooking for and it calculates printable recipes and a shopping list. I am modifying a couple of dishes slightly so I will make those changes to their list then add the items to my regular shopping list. Plus, I will add the ingredients for chili and meatloaf burgers since those are our favorite foods right now. Plus some breakfast and lunch items. This time I will also get some nuts for snacking. I miss nuts.

The meal planning also included looking at what we have left from last week. The result of that is I ate two chicken thighs for breakfast and picked one of Wellness Mama’s recipes that can use the rest of the shredded carrots and zucchini we still have. We will eat the beef and broccoli for lunch then be ready for our shopping trip. Things we don’t buy at the co-op, like paper goods, will then be added to our weekly on-line shopping list for order later today and delivery tomorrow. Then we’ll be ready for week two of our Whole 30.

Hang on, here we go again.

——————-

We not only didn’t go again, we made a 180 degree turn. We have to go to Texas. Leaving tomorrow morning and driving. We’ll be gone at least a week. Which means our Whole 30 needs to be put on hold. Which is too bad in more than one way. One of the biggest hits is that my body appears to have finally learned to burn fat instead of sugar.

How do I know? I postponed lunch for several hours without turning into a whiny two-year old screaming, “Feed me now!” That was wonderful! The question now becomes, what are we going to eat on the road?

TTYL,

Linda