Sunday, February 2, 2020

SUPER BOWL AND SUPER DRIVING ON GROUNDHOG DAY!


Hampton Inn
From St. Augustine, Florida to Fort Chiswell, Virginia
02.02.20 [Sunday, February 2, 2020]
55F, sunny


Friend Judy treated us like royalty during our stay, with stellar restaurants and great historic sites and activities. She has been my friend since 1967 when we studied together in Aix en Provence, France our junior year of college. Nebraska meets Pennsylvania!

Besides being tour guide par excellence, she decided that I needed to purchase some clothes that are out of my comfort zone. She talked about yoyos and oyos—young old people and old people acting old.  We had a lot of laughs this trip! This is a warning to Erie friends—be prepared!

Judy and Janie

One other item. This is not a movie blog by any means, but each night we chose movies to watch. Thursday night we watched Spotlight, Judy’s choice.  This is not a light subject matter and despite being a very good movie, it would not have been my choice. 

From the beginning I wanted to watch They Shall Not Grow Old again, the World War I movie/documentary by Peter Jackson, but it is not on Netflix now. So, since I liked the song, “There Won’t Be Many Coming Home” by Roy Orbison, a song in the movie The Hateful Eight, I opted for that movie on Friday night.   I sort of forgot the premise, the violence, and lots of other things in that movie. Oh my oh my. Quentin Tarantino is an amazing filmmaker who is not afraid of violence, exploding violence. Samuel L.  Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins star.
On Saturday night, TK got to pick, but we all decided to go with a comedy. Right away he chose The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Coen Brothers movie with Liam Neeson and James Franco, among others.  After watching about 75% of this movie of vignettes full of violence, blood, and nudity, we called it quits to review the definition of COMEDY. It appears that none of us knows the definition of light and comedy.

At that point, TK figured out that he could use his Samsung phone with Judy’s Roku to get access to They Shall Not Grow Old and we watched that truly great achievement by Peter Jackson after all. Of course, that movie is not a comedy either.

On this palindromic morning we said goodbye to a great hostess and her dear little dog, Sunny. On the road again! Thank goodness it was Sunday so traffic through Jacksonville, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina was quite easy. By 5:30 we arrived in Wytheville, Virginia, with similar temperature to St. Augustine.

Every year we say we push ourselves too hard and end up going all day without eating and so on. TK does a stellar job of driving, but it is tiring. We found a small Mexican restaurant near the hotel, Happy Cinco de Mayo. The cuisine was fine and the restaurant was not busy. Lexie, our server, was cheery.

Now we are settled in to watch Kansas City win! We hope!

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