Jayde and I decided to take a trip to Florida this summer. However, the vehicle we were to drive, my van, decided to take a different trip - to the transmission shop. Soooo, we waited. And waited. We were supposed to be there over the 4th of July. By the time the van was done, my schedule was starting to become busy again with fair preparations and home duties. Yes, we had to cancel our trip.
Or so it seemed.
We devised a plan to sneak attack mom and dad and Bruce. Seemed pretty simple. Get up at 330am drive almost 1000 miles and show up on their doorstep without advance notice. Good plan, huh? One hitch, though. What if they decide to just go somewhere and they are not home. Hmmmm, kind of a dilemma. So, I let dad in on the plan and he gave me the go-ahead.
Since Jayde had to work the day before we left, she was totally unprepared. Doing laundry at 10pm and not packed. I, on the other hand, had been packed for 2 weeks. I had refused to unpack because I knew I would eventually get to go. So, the time had come and I had all my stuff in the van. I told Jayde to make sure her stuff was in it before she went to bed. She agreed. Staying up until about midnight/1am watching Netflix, and keeping me awake was not the best thing to do for her. She didn't pack anything in the car the night before, except what she was going to sleep on. Needless to say, we didn't get gone until 417am.
We had to make a stop before getting into Dayton, to get ice and other things, but the interstate welcomed us at approximately 5am. I always dread the Cincinnati traffic, but this morning it was a very smooth drive into KY. It seemed that as soon as we got through the state line area, the fog set in. And it didn't lift until we were almost in TN.
I saw a sign that said that I-75 had a detour ahead and to take 25W. There was a hazardous spill on the Jellico mountain pass, and all 4 lanes of I-75 were shut down. Northbound traffic was being diverted onto 25E and Southbound traffic onto 25W. I decided to take 25E because I am familiar with that area. So, there was the first slowdown. Jayde had finally woken up and decided to play co-pilot, which was a great help to me. So, we started off going "round the mountain". I felt totally at ease and was enjoying the comfort of knowing where I was and not feeling disoriented at all. It was great! The Eastbound lane on 63 was bumper to bumper, while Westbound was free flowing and easy driving, until we got to Lafollette, TN. Halfway through town, we came to a stand still. There were traffic cops directing the diverted Northbound I-75 traffic in the middle of town. It was backed up for about a mile going that direction. We, however, were going the other way. It was about a 15 minuted wait for us to get through and we were on our way.
While we were sitting there, we happened to be parked in front of a local radio station. So we tuned in to see what was playing and see if there were any updates on the traffic conditions. There was a song playing on the radio that was singing about Speedwell, TN. Jayde thought it was cool road trip music, fitting the situation we were in and where we were at. It was a really cool time, being in that traffic jam. I'm really glad we went that way.
More about our road trip in future blogs.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
test blog
I am starting this blog today. Just testing this to see how it looks and to get it started.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)