Auburn in the Rain

2025-04-06
Auburn, AL

Today was supposed to be a hike at Cheaha State Park; however, that didn't work out. A lot of the state park visits early on were to see the best of Alabama and give me a chance to camp, but so far they have not panned out as hoped, especially on the camping side. Today it's pouring rain and thunderstorms, which made me decide not to hike to Hernandez Peak. Something about standing on a mountain top in the lightning seems like a bad idea.

I decided to leave Pell City around 8:30 heading for Auburn. It was already raining locally, sometimes quite hard. I drove out of the rain after about an hour, and arrived in time to check out Auburn University before the rain hit there. With no real preparation, I just kind of wandered about on the campus. It's Sunday, which works in my favor, but parking your car on a college campus is always a dicey proposition. All of my bad parking experiences during my many years in college have taught me that you can never completely know the rules; if anyone ever does, they immediately change them. However, not wanting to let you down, I risked leaving my car for as much as five minutes, and somehow managed to avoid a ticket. Unless they have cameras and just mail them out now. Hopefully not...

It turns out Clemson played Auburn for two years recently. Clemson has added a SEC game to the start of its football schedule, and plays the same team two consecutive years, one game at each school. It might seem like this is an attempt to show the quality of Clemson's football program against a perennially strong SEC, but more likely it's simpler than that. Clemson can fill a stadium and so can the SEC schools so it seems to me to be a way to maximize profits. Luckily it also generally leads to a good game so it's a win for fans too.

With a bit of extra time on my hands today, I thought I would muse on this less-planned trip. Normally I have each full day's worth of activities planned, and each night's lodging booked, all before I leave home. This trip has been a little lighter on planning, with only the first two hotels (four nights) booked, although my itinerary did have a number of hotel suggestions.

So far I have been booking one to three nights in advance. There are some pros, like not worrying about lodging and sometimes being able to plan to save some money by moving a town over, but also some minuses, like being locked in today and not just skipping this area entirely or having to pay more for the same hotel. Granted, because I scheduled a visit tomorrow I wouldn't have gone far, but I could have just driven to Pensacola and visited the museum today if I didn't have this booked.

I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about heading into an area and just hoping to find some place with a room. I have been shut out of my destinations due to youth sports tournaments, conferences, family reunions, etc. Some days it's fine to continue down the road, but if I want to start the day in that city I still feel like I should book in advance. I feel like this is maybe not the best way to travel though. Booking early or finding a place the night of are both cheaper while the day or days before is probably the most expensive. Maybe after a few more days of this I'll start letting go. The northward leg is pretty much designed to encourage finding accommodations on the fly. I certainly don't want to drive 7 hours to Houston without knowing where I'm going to sleep.