Category Archives: Charlie

Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest: The Wrap-Up

Statistics

(No relation)
  • Length of Trip: 29 days
  • Days of Long-Distance Driving: 11
  • Distance Driven: 5,463 miles (9,105 km)

Once again, my 2020 Subaru Outback was a champion road trip vehicle. I always had enough space, and then some. The polyurethane upholstery is great for traveling with dogs, too! By the end of the trip my total mileage was 42,161 – not too bad for a four-year-old car!

  • Nights in Hotels: 14
  • Nights in AirBnBs: 13
  • Nights staying with friends: 2

Wow, that was a lot of hotels! Fortunately, the majority of them were paid for with points. Overall my experiences with hotels were pretty good this trip, all of them being very dog-friendly. My AirBnBs were nice, with comfortable beds and all of the necessary amenities. I did learn some things about what to look for in future stays, though. Only a few nights staying at friends, though I am picky enough about where I sleep (and the additional logistics of Charlie) that was probably for the best.

  • Breweries Visited: 55
  • Beers Checked In: 172

So many flights of beer! I wound up at a few more taprooms this trip (as opposed to just breweries) and so wound up trying a lot of beers from local breweries I didn’t have time to visit (useful when in Portland!). As noted previously, brewery-hopping is really enjoyable on these trips because so many of them are dog-friendly. Having Charlie with me can often act as a great catalyst to meeting people and chatting. It’s a great way to reduce the social isolation of travel.

Lessons Learned:

  • Charlie is not a city dog.

I think that Charlie’s eyesight, which used to be “maybe shadows in bright light,” has gotten markedly worse this year. In addition to the woeful lack of greenery for him to feel under his paws, the smells and noise of city sidewalks were overwhelming enough to slow him down so much that I spent a lot of time half-carrying him in his harness to move along. Related:

  • Charlie is not a good urban dweller in general.

Our AirBnB in Seattle was a 4th-floor apartment, which…wasn’t great. Before we got fully settled in, he had a few accidents (easily cleaned up at least), and mornings were always a dash down the elevator to the exterior door so he could pee. At least he got good at holding it in until we were *just* outside. On the bright side, elevator rides don’t bother him!

  • Trendy neighborhoods are great to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

My AirBnBs in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and RiNo in Denver had a lot of interesting things within walking distance, but the prices were also sky-high. In the future I could see myself sticking more to the suburbs and venturing into city neighborhoods selectively, even if parking can be a pain in the butt.

  • A Hyatt Place is a Hyatt Place is a Hyatt Place.

With some notable exceptions (Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Knoxville, Tennessee) all of the Hyatt Places that I’ve stayed at have the same layout, the same furnishings, and the same (mediocre) breakfast buffet. I’m not sure they’re a good value for the money, but if you’re staying on World of Hyatt points they’re a great deal.

  • The best parts of these trips are finding neat cities that you never would have expected.

On this trip I learned that Spokane, Washington and Astoria, Oregon were really interesting places! I hope I get a chance to explore them more in the future.

  • Mountains soothe my soul.

Driving parallel to the mountains between Denver and Boulder, watching the sunset over the Front Range was absolutely stunning. I want to live somewhere where I can see that every day. And I will…someday.

As always, though, the biggest takeaway is a reminder: Life is short. You should take what time you can to enjoy the things that make you happy. I love travel, I love spending time with Charlie, and I love being able to do the two together. I can’t wait to see where out travels will take us in 2025!

I hope that you are able to do the things you love as well, dear reader, and find your own happiness.

I’ll close with some of my favorite photos from the trip. As always, thanks for reading!

Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest: Part 3, Ballard

Having explored around the suburbs of Seattle, it was time for our heroes to venture into the city! Our destination was the neighborhood of Ballard. Ballard is on the north side of Seattle and is full of interesting hipster restaurants and bars and interesting shops. It’s a very walkable area, which is a big reason I chose it. It was to be my home for the next five days.

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Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest: Part 2, Seattle Suburbs

Did you ever start a blog project, promising to post every day, and then you…didn’t? No? Just me? Ah well.

One reason I wasn’t too worried about it is that over the past couple of months I have taken the time to go back to the 2017 Great Western Road Trip, the Maritimes Trip in 2022, and the road trip to the Southwest in 2023 and collapsed the daily blog entries into more-digestible chunks, so you’re only reading 4-5 entries and not 20+ entries. (Also, going back and fixing the photos that were posted to social media sites so they were locally-hosted was kind of a pain!)

So anyway, let’s see about getting back on track! I’ve tried to break the trip into logical parts from here:

  • This Part: Seattle Suburbs
  • Part 3: Ballard, Seattle
  • Part 4: Portland and the trip to Denver
  • Part 5: A week and a half in Denver, then home

I know these get kind of long, though I love having them to return to in the future. If you prefer to skim through just for the photos, that’s OK too!

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Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest, Part 1

Sometimes you have great plans and everything comes together, and sometimes those plans fall through. We’ll put these blog entries in the latter category 🙂 It’s been a long couple of days of longer-than-usual driving legs and that has left me pretty tired by the end of the day and not up for blog entries. Anyway! Enough excuses.

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Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest! (2024 Summer Road Trip)

It’s time for the 2024 Summer Road Trip: Charlie Goes to the Pacific Northwest! These trips have been wonderful, and I’m very excited for this year’s edition. To recap past trips:

This year, shown in the blue line on the map, Charlie and I will be on the road for four weeks to the Pacific Northwest and to Denver! I had so much fun last year, and traveling with Charlie is always very enjoyable. Solo road trips can be an incredibly isolating experience, and I find having a cute and friendly dog along helps to break the ice. I’ve gotten into so many great random conversations with people that were started from people wanting to say hello to Charlie.

As I was planning this year’s route, I thought about where I’ve been, and where I want to return to. I grew up in the American Southeast, spending the first 30 years of my life in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. I’ve had quite enough of those and am looking forward to seeing new places! And while I have friends there and know many wonderful people live there, I have zero desire to visit Texas or Florida in the current political climate. This extends to much of the Southwest, to be honest.

I haven’t been in the Pacific Northwest since 2020, when I spent Christmas there in a lovely AirBnB in Capital Hill, so Seattle seems like a great destination. I haven’t been to Portland since 2017, so an extended stop there would be nice. And I always want to visit Denver – I love the heck out of that city. So with my anchor points set, it was time to lay out my itinerary.

I don’t want to dawdle along the way between Chicago and Seattle, so I’ll be driving like hell across North Dakota, Montana, and Washington to get there as quickly as possible. At the same time, I try to keep each day’s driving to around six hours to leave time to relax and maybe explore our stop for the night a bit. Likewise the sprint between Portland and Denver will be as short as possible, but hopefully I’ll get to see some nice things along the way.

As always, I will be posting near-daily updates here on my blog, as well as lots of posts to social media (Mastodon and BlueSky). As with last year, if you want easy notifications of blog entries, you can either subscribe to my Telegram channel (now with a feedback chat!) or RSS.

I hit the road on Saturday, and I just can’t wait!

Charlie Goes West: The Wrap-Up

Statistics

Length of trip: 27 days
Days of long-distance driving: 15 days
Distance driven: 5,773 miles (9,291 km)
Average Fuel Economy: 24.2 miles per gallon (10.3 km/litre)

I am so very happy with my 2020 Subaru Outback! It was the perfect road trip car. By the end of the trip the total mileage on the car was 30,336 miles.

Nights in hotels: 9
Nights in AirBnbs: 15 (AirBnbs in Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and Denver)
Nights staying with friends: 3

I was very happy with my AirBnbs, though they were all very different. Flagstaff and Albuquerque compared to a studio motel room, but Denver was actually a two-bedroom house with full kitchen. The real winner was Denver which put me in easy walking of so many great shops and restaurants.

Breweries visited: 49
Beers checked in: 148

Why breweries? I assure you I am by no means a heavy drinker, though I do enjoy a good beer. I have found the brewery-hopping is a nice thing to do when traveling with Charlie because they tend to be dog-friendly, and there is a built-in social environment. I had the good fortune to have great conversations with random strangers, something that is normally kind of difficult for me to initiate. Everybody wants to talk about Charlie, though, and that’s a great introduction to other topics. (Also, how did I check in so many beers? I like flights.)

Lessons Learned

  • Back to back to back days of driving are pretty rough. You’d think I would have learned that last year!
  • Mountains lift my spirits. I saw the first hint of mountains in western South Dakota, the Black Hills, and I was actually elated. It was a great feeling.
  • Exerting yourself at 7,000+ feet above sea level takes a far greater toll than you might expect. I mean, I’m still out of shape, but I’m not THAT out of shape!
  • Mountain roads are fun. Back roads are fun. Even rocky, unpaved dirt roads are fun (when you have a car equipped for it). Interstates are boring, but when you need to get from here to there quickly, sometimes you have no choice.
  • Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keep Assist are a godsend on long, straight, boring highways.
  • Nevada always surprises me with the beauty to be found in even some of the most remote and desolate areas.
  • California is a nice place to visit, but I’m pretty sure I would never want to live there.
  • I knew this already, but traveling with a dog who loves to ride in the car is wonderful. You never feel alone, and always have a friend right nearby. Charlie is the best road trip buddy ever!

The final lesson learned is that although this trip wasn’t cheap and was a lot of time away from work, who knows what the future will bring? Do the things that make you happy while you can. Sure, plan for the future, but don’t forget to enjoy today, too.

I have so many wonderful memories from this trip that I will treasure for years to come. Those of you who have followed along in this blog or on social media, I hope that you were able to enjoy the trip vicariously. I also hope that you have adventures of your own in your future!

Thanks for reading.

Coming in late? You can start reading about the entire trip from the beginning: Charlie Goes West

Maritimes Road Trip, Part 2

Day 5: Ottawa, Ontario to Quebec City

I woke up entirely too early, but I decided to take advantage of this and get on the road. I took Charlie for walk in Byward Market, which was just getting started for the day, and got to take a picture of him in front of the famous Ottawa sign, which is usually mobbed by tourists.

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Maritimes Road Trip, Part 1

Day 1: Home to Livonia, Michigan

 This started off well enough, at least. I had the car packed up and ready on time, and drove up to Chad’s place to drop off Nora. It was raining pretty steadily and I found that after applying the sealant to the windshield the wipers were chattering with every pass. I conferred with Piper, and he confirmed my suspicion: they needed to be replaced. Fortunately there was an Autozone just up the road in Kenosha, but after a brief detour and installation of new wipers, Charlie and I were good to go!

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Maritimes Road Trip, Day 0

Everything is packed and ready to go into the car in the morning. Charlie’s food, medications, bowls, and various accessories are ready to go. Nora’s food and medications are packed and ready to drop off with Chad, who is a wonderful friend who will be taking good care of Nora while I’m gone.

Here’s what the next three weeks look like:

This is looking like it’ll be over 4,000 miles. It’s a lot, but I’m really looking forward to it. Seeing new parts of the world is always exciting anyway, and I’ve never explored Quebec or the Maritimes before. I’m also looking forward to meeting up with great friends along the way, and hopefully meeting some new friends too!

I’ll be blowing up my Twitter along the way, and I am hoping to post daily updated here as well. Stay tuned!

A map of the Great Lakes and Eastern Canada showing a round-trip route from Chicago, Illinois to Halifax, Nova Scotia

On the Road Again: Maritimes Road Trip 2022!

It’s been five years since my last road trip, which means this year’s trip is long overdue! The general idea is to hit the road for three weeks, traveling to Halifax, Nova Scotia and back. And this time I won’t be going alone! I will have Charlie as my co-pilot.

Charlie, a RedMerle Border Collie
Charlie can be my navigator. Sure, he’s blind, but what could possibly go wrong?

The general plan is to stop every couple of days and work from my hotel room. In my current position I can’t just disappear for three weeks, so this seems like a reasonable balance. Plotting things out, I realize I’m probably still driving too much on too many days, but on the flip side I have worked hard to keep all driving legs to five hours or less. All of my hotels are booked, so the itinerary is set:

  • Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Toronto, Ontario
  • Ottawa, Ontario
  • Québec City, Québec
  • Rivière-du-Loup, Québec
  • Moncton, New Brunswick
  • Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
  • Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • Lubec, Maine
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • Binghampton, New York
  • Cleveland, Ohio

A bit of a whirlwind tour even taking 19 days, but I’m really looking forward to it! I’m glad I will have Charlie with me, since he helps with a couple of things. First and foremost his company will be welcome. Having him along means that I will almost always be eating in an outdoor environment (Remember Covid? Yeah, it’s still around.) Finally, everyone wants to stop and say hello and pet Charlie (and he loves it). This provides needed social interaction, since I tend to be rather introverted when traveling alone, and not very good at striking up conversations with strangers. It helps that Charlie adores riding in the car, too!

As with my last road trip, I will be documenting it both on Twitter and here. Keep an eye out!