My body was telling me that I needed to sleep and every time I sat in the rental van (Chrysler Town & Country), my feet and ankles would swell painfully. I ended up just switching between putting my feet up on a pillow on the dash board and falling a sleep, then putting my feet down and stretched out while I slept. While it was less than ideal, I knew my turn to drive was coming. It didn't come that first day. By the time we were 80 miles from our planned hotel stop in Knoxville, TN, we encountered parking lot type of traffic due to road construction. We stayed in that traffic for a couple of hours, only inching forward every few minutes. By the time we arrived at our planned destination at 11:00, the hotel parking lot was filled to the brim. We wouldn't be able to get a hotel, so we got gas, had an emotional falling apart from one of the teens, then pushed on until my husband could no longer drive. He said he could have made it home, but I told him that I was glad he stopped. All of us needed to rest, including him, even if it were for only a couple of hours.
I woke up at 6AM unable to sleep any longer. Mr. G decided it was time to get up and get moving. We wanted to get home to our own beds. I started out driving. I finished getting us through Tennessee and most of West Virginia when I needed to close my eyes again. We were about a half an hour from the Pennsylvania state line when Mr. G took over again. It was bittersweet when we crossed over the state line. We knew we were home, but our hearts and newly made friends were in Albany, GA. We fell in love with the area and the people and although we have friends that are as close as family here in PA, we are both feeling the strong spiritual pull to GA.
We were about 35 minutes from home when I texted my friend to let her know and to have her daughter let the dogs out. No sooner did I press send, then I80 turned in to a parking lot, much like I81 did in TN the night before. Fortunately, just a mile up from where we stopped was the Knox exit. When we crossed the overpass, it revealed quite a site of miles and miles of stopped vehicles on I80. We took side roads all the way up to 322, but were stopped for 1/2 hour there as well. It seems that the "powers that be" had some very poorly executed plans and decided to do construction on all these roads all at the same time, creating such a difficult time of waiting for everyone. So we took even smaller side roads to get around and through the construction to get home. We arrived just in time to visit with my friend for a little while, showing her a couple pictures of the houses we found, then she left with her daughter and our kids to go to Civil Air Patrol.
What a whirlwind of a day! But, I was so glad to be home!
Some things we learned on this trip were that it doesn't matter how inexpensive the room suite situation, my hubby and I still need our own room. Another thing that would have been nice is one of those George Foreman grills in our hotel room. We had free breakfast, but needed to feed 3 hungry teens in a hotel suite. We ended up buying yogurt, salads and large hogies from Walm*rt most of the time and going out to eat every once in a while. We bought gift cards to help offset the expense months ago and brought those with us, but only used the ones from Subway. Go figure! So we'll use the other ones for date nights. It's all good! :)
Right now we're preparing for the road back to Albany. We are looking at larger vehicles to haul our things down to storage and to use afterwards on our property.
We're also getting ready for our son's graduation. At that, I need to say, "Adios!" and get a second coat of paint on my powder room wall. ;)
Have a wonderful day!
God Bless,
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