Today is the big driving day. Time to get up to New York for the holidays. Dominica spent the day packing the new Acadia. We are looking forward to having so much space for the drive. Even the X3 was insanely cramped when doing a trip like this. Having the Acadia is going to be awesome. We can actually take enough stuff with us and have room for both Liesl and Oreo too. Plus now we have working satellite radio and an auxiliary input so that we can listen to Audible books while driving.
I went into the office today for my last day there for almost two weeks. It is also my last day seeing Jeff at the office as he is not going to be working here very shortly. His last day is in just about a week.
Brian and I had Mexican for lunch today at a popular place near the club. The afternoon, after lunch, was very slow and I was able to escape the office around three to run up to the house to get ready for the drive.
Dominica had taken Oreo to the vet to get his stitches taken out. Their appointment was at three so we were hopeful to be on the road just minutes after that. Unfortunately it ended up taking over an hour and a half before Oreo was able to get in to see the vet so it was after four thirty when we finally managed to start driving. Why is there always something that holds us up for hours every time that we are going to be doing a really long drive?
We hit the road for our first real trip in the Acadia. It turned out that the Grices were on the road early while we were on the road quite late so that we were actually on the road at just about the same time. So we changed our route and as we were heading up TX190 we switched from the northern “aka Oklahoma” route to the southern “aka Arkansas” route and worked our way east through Dallas rush hour to get onto Interstate 30 to Texarkana.
We timed it pretty much perfectly that we arrived in Texarkana just about fifteen minutes ahead of the Grices. We stopped at McDonald’s and grabbed some food while we waited for them to catch up. Once we met up there we started caravanning up towards New York. It is going to be a long night.
The drive tonight went well. We were undecided how we were going to travel – whether it would be straight through or if we would be stopping somewhere for the night. We made good time and were through Arkansas before we knew it.
In Memphis I didn’t realize that the road changed speed dramatically and ended up getting a speeding ticket. Argh. My first in a decade, however, and the last one a full nine or ten years ago was on the same day while driving to Dominica’s parents house, just like I am now! This was a tiny, no points, $24 ticket, though. So other than the inconvenience of having to get pulled over, it’s not a big deal at all.
We finally made it out to Nashville. The western Tennessee portion of the trip is really the most boring, I think, of the whole drive. It always seems to be done in the dark and always when I am really tired and even in daylight there is not that much to see. Eastern Tennessee is much more interesting.
We made the decision to just push on and get the drive over with. So we will be driving all day tomorrow as well. We will hit New York in the late afternoon.
The Acadia did great. We are loving the ride and the extra space as well as the satellite radio. Liesl likes it better because she has more visibility to the outside and Oreo really seems to enjoy having the third row to himself. Dominica make him a little cave back there out of pillows and blankets so he is basically encased in a snuggly little nest where he can’t fall or run into anything but can move around some – to the extent that his harness allows – and not worry about falling or interference from a certain toddler. He slept soundly the whole drive.