The Longest Day / The Longest Night / The Longest Day

The Longest Day / The Longest Night /The Longest Day

We pulled out of our beloved Ferncliff around 12:00 p.m. Friday, November 17, 2006. We arrived at Java Roasting Company just 25 minutes later for coffee to go and coffee to take to Florida. We must have coffee! We were finally “on the road” around 1:00 p.m. We arrived in Lonoke, AR and Steve began to make the first of many adjustments to the bus. After a few lengthy stops in Arkansas, we arrived in Memphis just in time for rush hour on a Friday night. I think it is safe to say that we will never, ever travel 55 to 240 to 78 again at rush hour on a bus. By the time we got through Memphis, we needed to make more adjustments to bus. We traveled through the night, and even though I promised I would never shop at Wal-mart again, we were thankful for the super centers open 24 hours a day we found along the way that carried the many fuel filters we went through. So…after lengthy delays for the tweaking of the bus, we arrived in Atlanta around 5:00 a.m. Steve was very sleepy and needed to make more adjustments to the bus. So we pulled into a Home Depot parking lot, parked right beside a "no overnight parking sign (good thing it was only early morning), and we all crashed (sleeping, not the bus). After sleeping for a few hours, Steve went in to home depot to get what he needed, some of the kids and I walked to Burger King to pick up breakfast. While there we decided that we all needed Burger King crowns. See picture below. We were finally on the road again around 11:00 a.m. And of course we had frequent stops accommpanied by slow driving that finally led us Aunt Rae Rae's house - a 5 hour drive that took 9. But we finally made it safely and relatively soundly. During the trip we sang songs, read books, fought, cleaned up messes we made, ate a bunch of snacks (thanks Suzanne and Anne), Abby even cried her eyes out reading the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, and we all slept some (except for Steve who was driving). But most importantly, we had plenty of room and we were all very comfortable, and Steve's back, which would have been hurting him badly as it does during our long trips, didn't hurt a bit. Eventually, we pulled into the drive way to a beautiful sight of family eagerly waiting to give and receive lots of hugs. It didn't take long to clean up and hit the bed.

Stayed tuned for more updates.