Thursday, August 04, 2011
Gencon: The Arrival
This year we decided to make the drive in one day, with stops, from home to Gencon. It went surprisingly well. No major construction snafus (I-94 in Kalamazoo was closed during rush for a bad truck accident but it was long clear) and the drive was smooth as a whistle (ignore the TripTik recommendation to take a tour through downtown and used last year's Google maps direction).
Along the way we stopped at Coldwater, hit a Dairy Queen for a snack and the Swallow's Nest bookstore (http://www.swallowsnestbooks.com/) for a poke about. Heleen found a couple of paperbacks in series she has been reading. Stopped by the Gamestop at I-69 exit and then off to Fort Wayne. There we hit the Golden Corral for lunch, poked through a Toys-R-Us and back into the car for the last segment. Overall just 6.5 hours including both stops.
So far the Hampton Inn has been pretty good. Our room is nice but we changed on day 1 (more on that later) and the breakfast/lounge was nice. A surprise was the "no-self-parking" aspect, the hotel parks everyone in their lots (fortunately our car was accessible even when parked) and you use a ticket to get to the car (which I needed to do as I could not carry everything in one load).
VIG badge pickup was smooth and quick but as per last year, swag bags were still being filled and would be available some time on Thursday. So we picked up our tags and retired for the night.
Along the way we stopped at Coldwater, hit a Dairy Queen for a snack and the Swallow's Nest bookstore (http://www.swallowsnestbooks.com/) for a poke about. Heleen found a couple of paperbacks in series she has been reading. Stopped by the Gamestop at I-69 exit and then off to Fort Wayne. There we hit the Golden Corral for lunch, poked through a Toys-R-Us and back into the car for the last segment. Overall just 6.5 hours including both stops.
So far the Hampton Inn has been pretty good. Our room is nice but we changed on day 1 (more on that later) and the breakfast/lounge was nice. A surprise was the "no-self-parking" aspect, the hotel parks everyone in their lots (fortunately our car was accessible even when parked) and you use a ticket to get to the car (which I needed to do as I could not carry everything in one load).
VIG badge pickup was smooth and quick but as per last year, swag bags were still being filled and would be available some time on Thursday. So we picked up our tags and retired for the night.
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