…on a beautiful warm day, the first day of Autumn! They say every journey begins with a single step. Ours began with 485 miles of open road and blue skies. 🙂

Before we set out on our grand adventure, I appointed a trip mascot. It’s a silly little thing that I’ve done for just about every long road trip. Usually, it’s a Happy Meal toy from McDonald’s. This time, it is a figurine that used to grace my cubicle at my former job.

A while ago, many of my colleagues got a My Little Pony blind bag to open and each contained a saccharine-sweet pink, teal, or purple “protagonist pony” (with names like Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, and Applejack). When I opened mine, I found that I had gotten a villain: Queen Chrysalis. She’s a dingy greenish gray and has cobwebs for wings. In other words, she’s perfect! Her name represents renewal and change…which are the words I’m using to describe the end of my job of 20+ years and my adventure on the open road. So villain or not (and I think she is just misunderstood), she now graces my dashboard and hopefully will stay put!

With mascot firmly affixed, car expertly packed, Stephen King’s 11/22/63 audio book queued up, and coffee stored in our Hydroflasks, we embarked on our journey. Look at the joy on our faces. Can you feel the excitement?

485 miles and about 8 hours later (Billy only snoozed for a small part of the time :-), we arrived at our illustrious Quality Inn accommodations in Akron, Ohio. Looking forward to checking out Cuyahoga Valley National Park tomorrow. The first time I heard about it was when we started researching the trip.

Now it’s time for my Midas Touch beer and then bed. Pleasant dreams, all! 🙂