Wednesday. Today begins our long drive from New York to Texas.
We all had to be up pretty early this morning because we had to do the final loading of the U-Haul so that Paul could get on the road. He needs to get out ahead of the family in the Nissan Quest because he has the big truck and needs to face the weather and have more time to make decisions and to drive more slowly.
We made good time and got him on the road by just after eight. The truck is loaded. Really loaded. So much stuff in there, it is crazy. How could we possibly own this much stuff? And we are leaving so much behind!
After that, we had to pack the minivan. That didn’t take too long. We have a lot of stuff in there, too. It’s not super packed, but it’s well packed for sure. It is carrying all of the stereo equipment that has been in storage for years. All of the Rotel and Marantz gear. Stuff that has been in storage since before the kids were born! Maybe we can have a stereo again soon.
We had everything ready so early that instead of waiting until noon to get on the road we started out just after ten. And I was ready to go before everyone else. I had everything packed up and loaded and was ready to get on the road.
There was a lot of snow, and snow still coming down, and an insane amount of wind as we got started. The wind stayed with us all morning, too. We are following the route of the truck so that we can be a sort of support vehicle in case anything goes wrong on the trip. So that means going the central route through Ohio, on to St. Louis, and then down through Oklahoma.
We did okay in the wind and snow. It was an exhausting drive, not nothing bad. Just fatiguing fighting against all of that wind and the occasional bit of slippery road. The temperature was hovering right around freezing all day as we drove.
We got closer to Paul throughout the day but only ever gained about twenty minutes on him. Luciana really wanted to stop for dinner and had been asking to do so since early in the morning. So we stopped in Ashland, Ohio and ended up at the same stop that we’ve done several times before with a KFC, Taco Bell, and a Popeye’s, along with a large convenience store. How we keep stopping at this exact same spot, I have no idea. So we all had a sit down dinner of Taco Bell, and got snacks for the rest of the drive.
We had to coordinate hotels a bit, just to be sure that everything was handled. Paul needed a room in Effingham, Illinois. So Dominica handled all of the booking from our car. She found a Baymount with a really good rate. So that works. We talked for about an hour about how well I was doing on the drive and decided that even though I was doing really well and could push on for a while, there is a benefit to the timing of arriving in Effingham, the low cost, and knowing that we were next to the truck. So we just booked a second room at the same hotel and drove on to there. Dominica stresses out if we don’t have a set destination for the night, anyway. So this helped her to relax a lot.
The rest of the drive was uneventful. We got into the hotel and into the room at a decent time, probably around midnight. I spent about two hours getting the girls fed and into bed. Luciana has had sniffles for several days and really wanted to take a long, hot shower now that we were in a hotel, so I set that up for her and she felt a lot better after that.
I finally got to bed just after two. Pretty late. The plan is to be on the road by seven. So not going to be a lot of sleep for me.