Close Encounters of the Traveling Kind
Where quick stops meet long journeys – travel tales for families, pros, and wanderers alike
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- Destinations
- Encounters & Local Intel
- Lessons from the Road
- Terminal Thoughts & Pit Stops
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Hotel loyalty often gets framed as a game. Points, tiers, upgrades, and charts promising outsized returns if you’re willing to optimize hard enough. There’s a whole ecosystem built around extracting maximum value from loyalty programs — usually involving spreadsheets and a tolerance for inconvenience. That’s never been what loyalty meant to me. For frequent travelers,…
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Some hotels are destinations. Others are simply places to land — to get warm, get quiet, and reset before the next day takes over. The DoubleTree in Dayton was firmly in the second category, and it handled that role with calm competence. Why This Stay I was in Dayton for a single overnight business trip.…
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Some airports impress you with scale. Others impress you by staying out of your way. I tend to appreciate the second kind — especially on short business trips, when efficiency matters more than spectacle. Dayton International Airport falls squarely into that category. Why I Was Here This was my destination airport for a quick weekday…
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There are rental cars that simply get you where you’re going — and then there are rentals that quietly change how the trip feels. This was the latter. I picked up a Tesla Model Y in Dayton for what amounted to a very typical business itinerary: airport to hotel, hotel to meetings, meetings back to…
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I didn’t set out to find a new travel charger. Instead, I found myself in need of one. I was in an airport with a phone down to its last ions, doing the familiar scan for a place to charge. Every public USB port I tried had already lost the fight — broken tongues, half-sheared…
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Electric vehicles tend to provoke strong opinions. Some people swear by them. Others swear at them. Most of the conversation revolves around what EVs represent — environmentally, politically, culturally. In practice, though, renting and driving an EV on a trip is far less ideological than people expect. Day to day, the differences between an electric…
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One of my favorite travel tips has nothing to do with loyalty points, booking hacks, or elite status. It’s simple: ask a local where to eat. That’s exactly how I found myself at Godfrey’s Bakery & Café on a recent overnight in Falls Church, VA. I was wandering down the sidewalk when a friendly local…
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Sometimes, loyalty really does pay off. On a recent overnight trip to Falls Church, Virginia, I was booked into the Hilton Garden Inn by my company — nothing fancy, just a Two Queen room for a quick stay before heading to the next stop. But here’s the thing: when you’ve logged enough miles, you learn…
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There’s something oddly comforting about rolling into a small town in summer and realizing you have it (almost) to yourself. No crowds. No waitlists. Just enough locals to remind you this isn’t a ghost town—just one that breathes a little easier when the semester’s out. I was in Blacksburg for a few nights—technically work, but…
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They say timing is everything. I say timing is overrated—especially when you’re hungry, barreling down I-81, and trying to snap photos between the glare of truck grills and missed exits. I found myself heading south through the Shenandoah Valley on a stretch of highway that can only be described as scenic, provided you’re willing to…
Close Encounters of the Traveling Kind 