HHI: Looking for a bypass around the traffic

Heading to SC was always a daunting drive.  We try to make the trusty Civic more comfortable for the 1700km trek down.  We leave Thursday evening so that the Friday drive is not so long and we can make a day of it in Charlotte, NC which is less than 500 km from our final destination in HHI.

I discovered how to tether the ipad to my iphone5.  I didn't realize you could tether it,  I recall asking this question about doing this a few years ago and the Apple rep said I couldn't.  But it is a capability in the iPhone 4 and 5.  And by default it's off.

So it was kinda neat that Tresa could surf on the way down, while were still in ON.  Over the border I disabled data roaming, and only turned it on when I really needed it.

One app that was a big help was iExit.  I forget how I heard about it, but I think it was from a Consumer's report magazine.  And it was a huge help.

Last year we had encountered problems getting a room to stay on our way down.  But it was an even BIGGER issue heading home.  Tired, exhausted from the heat and sun and driving since 6am and it was now midnight, we encountered no vacancies hotel after hotel.  And it was because of storm from the previous week had taken out power in WV.  So this year we were able to use this app to pre-book rooms if we knew we where we were going to end up stopping.

Another useful thing I got was this Lifeproof case for my iPhone.  This girl had it in the Bahamas.  And I wasn't sure about spending so much for a case, but it's worth it.  It's a waterproof case and you can now take video under water with your iPhone.  It's amazing.  Beats the ziplock bag I was using.

It rained every day, but usually in the afternoon.  There was only 1 day where we were rained out for golf, but that's okay.  The rain actually made it cooler than the same time last year.  I remember feeling sick from slight heat exhaustion.  This year I didn't have that problem.  It made the drive home easier.  Also we managed to find a route around the traffic before the tunnels through the WV mountains.  It was so good not to be in stop-in-go traffic for hours.  We were thinking we'd have to find another route home.  And this was a timesaver.

However the ocean was much rougher.  Bob would go out in the turbulent waters with rocks in his pockets to do his penance for a poor golf game due to a sore rib. But it made for boogie board riding better.  And I don't know if the rains had anything to do with it, but there were horseshoe crabs underneath our feet.  I stepped on on and it freaked me out.  But Madi picked it up.  Wish I had a photo of that.

We booked our return home hotel using iExit and glad we did.  The app is useful and free.  It also helped us find restaurants other than fast food to eat dinner at.

Our last stop before the border was Erie, where we found this authentic Mexican cuisine.  We know because it says 'Authentic'.  Plus everyone working inside was mexican.  They started speaking to us in spanish.  I said 'si' to whatever they said.

Oddly enough it was next door to another mexican restaurant Qboda, that looked more like a chain.  It was next to a BBQ place and a donut place.

Note to self.  On I90 East, take the Hamburg route.  The tolls are less crowded.  I don't know if it's because Mel's garmin GPS is newer than mine, but his took him that route.  And Ray and I took the usual I90 route.  We had gotten on the interstate before Mel, and when we got to customs, he was already there.  And we weren't going slow, that's for sure.

Customs was always stressful.  But thankfully it was uneventful. WOO HOO!
Note to self, don't be behind Ray at customs, he doesn't listen to the question being asked.