Labor Day Road Tripping

The Labor Day holiday brings the opportunity for an extra day of travel. Of course, the holiday also brings more traffic, busier tourist destinations and more people out enjoying the three-day weekend.

Originally, I had planned on passing through Glen Oaks for their annual Apple Festival, then continue on to Laughlin, Nevada, however, the recent wildfires shut down access to Glen Oaks and as a result, Laughlin as well. I've thrown around various other ideas of places to go; The Grand Canyon, Monterey, San Diego, even ambitious treks to the California-Oregon border and traveling the old Route 66 through California. But when all the logistics were worked out, I realized that I didn't want to drive around in the triple-digit heat all day.

That's when I decided to have a little fun with this. I'm renting a 2010 Ford Mustang and I'm jumping on a freeway. I might go north, maybe east, perhaps south, it's all up in the air. I'll end up where I end up. Here are the "rules" I'm going to follow on this particular road trip:

1.) Three hour time limit. I'll start the clock the second I merge onto whatever freeway I'm on. From there, I have three hours total of driving. I can pull off the freeway(s) at anytime and return to them at anytime. The only thing that is set in stone is the second the clock hits three hours, I stop in whatever city/town/village/middle of nowhere I'm at.

2.) An idea I'm borrowing from the Road Tripping pilot I'm developing - a challenge. In this particular case, I'm entitling the challenge, "Eat the Vowels." This is basically a scaled down version of, "Eat the Alphabet," which I will use on longer road trips. The challenge is very straight-forward. On this road trip, I must eat something that falls under a specific letter of the alphabet (in this case A, E, I, O, U and for the hell of it, Y). Also, I cannot eat all the vowels in one sitting.

So there you have it, three hours of driving and a lot of eating. Sounds like the perfect Labor Day road trip to me. Happy travels everyone and have a safe and fun holiday weekend!