Travel Tales: Akron to LA 2014 - Day 1

This year I could not begin my trip as soon as I wanted to do so. My time in Ohio had been filled with handling family obligations, recovering from injuries and coping with an unexpected death. The one piece of good news was that I would have a passenger on this trip and we would do some sightseeing on the way. Although we had a long trip ahead of us, we were excited to get on our way to visit the Utah national parks!

(Photo credit: memyselfandtheinterstate.com)

We left later in the morning, but were on the road by 5:30. The temperature was 19 degrees when we left Akron, but the day was sunny. We were not supposed to have rain until Joplin. The traffic on I-70 and I-44 was light. The time went by quickly and by 6:30 that evening we were in Joplin and happy we had missed the rain. We considered stopping for the night, but did not see any hotel we liked. We made the fortunate decision to continue on to Oklahoma City.

I had researched hotels for the area between Joplin and Oklahoma City on TripAdvisor before leaving Ohio. I made note of the prices because I wanted to compare them to the prices offered in the hotel coupon books. The prices in the books were less. When we called ahead to check on availability of rooms, we found that talking directly to the hotel got us an even better price. Keep in mind we were traveling the week before Thanksgiving which was a great time to get a deal.

We got into Oklahoma City at 9:30. We planned at the time to stop at Albuquerque the next night.

(Photo taken in 2014)