Indy, Columbus and home.

We made it to Indianapolis on Thursday night. We stayed in kind of the suburbs of Indy as we wanted a hotel close to Jane – we were hoping to have dinner with her, but she was working late so that didn’t happen. This hotel was a Choice Hotel(TM) and literally was minutes from an REI and Whole Foods, but was easily the worst hotel we stayed at – Jeremy did a fantastic job of booking the hotels on this trip – a mix of high end hotels, airbnbs, cheap motels, etc., but we were not sure if this hotel was even clean. It smelled bad. I may have wondered if a small bug I found was a bedbug. But we stayed the night and learned a lesson. The main thing is the pet fee of hotels, they range in price from like $10-$75. So if we get a room that is, let’s say, $90, it usually comes with a $20 pet fee – so that’s about $100. But if we want a room for $170, the pet fee is usually $75 dollars, which brings it close to $300. So, you know, it’s impossible to pay like $200 for a room. Anyways, this hotel was close to lots of nice nature: a loop around a lake:

Ten minutes from a beautiful mountain bike loop (available for runners too), beautifully and lovingly maintained by a local club.

Friday morning we drove to Columbus to spend the night with Paul (my running coach). We dropped Elka off at a dog sitter for the night because even though this doggie appears friendly in this picture (he is very friendly to people), he does not like dogs, esp at his house. Elka (via rover.com) found a very gay, very tattooed man who lived in an apartment in a very hip part of town to spend the night with. This dog sitter was a financial analyst for Abercrombie and Fitch which is headquartered in Columbus – strange, huh?

We left Columbus at about 9:30 am on Saturday and booked it back home. We stopped only to pee and to buy gas (and coffee?). We did not stop for lunch – we had handfuls of peanuts, we were so eager to get home. And we got home about 4 pm on Saturday. The trip odometer read almost 9300 miles.

Elka was thrilled! We gave her a care bear stuffed animal to celebrate. Elka is generally a relaxed dog, but we did see some anxiousness while we traveled – she did not like it when we were apart from each other. Like if one of us left for a run or we all left her for dinner. I’m sure she was happy to be home.

This was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken – thank you to Jeremy who took care of all the logistics, the booking of rooms, the planning of the itinerary, the mapping of the route, the driving (!) (I did only 2-3 hours of highway driving the entire time). He packed and unpacked the van everyday. I could not have celebrated our 25 years of marriage in any better way. I loved everything about this trip and I love our life together and thank you for making it very interesting and unforgettable in our very boring ways. Others may go to Paris and have fine wine, but we go to Laramie, Wyoming and have pizza (well we did go to Napa, so there is that, but the Laramie meal was better…). With love, always.