Thursday. The second day of driving from New York back down to Dallas. Everyone said that they wanted to get onto the road early today, so with only four hours of sleep I got myself up at six in the morning. No one else was awake, so I showered and took some time to relax. I went and got coffee and scouted out the breakfast situation. Eventually I had to wake people up as it was clear that we were not pulling out of Effingham, Illinois anytime soon if I didn’t take matters into my own hands. Dominica always says that she is stuck waiting for me, but it really is just something that she says and most of the time, it is really no the case. So this morning, I waited over two hours for everyone else to be ready to go.
We ended up getting Paul onto the road just a little in front of us, but he is going to Cuba and stopping for a bit to get lunch and to hook up the trailer so that he can pull his CanAm side by side back down to Dallas.
The drive went pretty smoothly today. We didn’t run into any bad weather or any traffic problems. We made excellent time and were only a few minutes behind Paul when we shot past Cuba. He never caught up to us again.
We had some Taco Bell for lunch. Liesl never grows tired of that. And then we grabbed some quick Burger King before leaving Oklahoma.
We were amazing to see gas at only $1.88 when we got into Texas! It is over $3.00 in NY! And it is suddenly warm. It was around freezing in Effingham this morning, and almost seventy when we got to southern Oklahoma.
It was probably around ten when we got to Texas. Paul was a few hours behind us and decided to stop for a steak dinner break at Choctaw Casino in Durant and get a break from driving before doing the last bit. He managed to get to the house right about midnight. No unloading of the truck tonight, no way that we could handle any of that.
Everyone is really excited to be back in our house. Rachel texted me from work when we got in and asked if I was up for going out tonight. I’m tired, but I have done nothing but drive all day so going out sounded pretty good.
She got to the house well after midnight, so it would be a short night out. She came in, did her make up, got changed, and drove us to the Fox & Hound on Midway. We got some beers (or EastCiders for me) and shot a few games of darts.
After the bar we came home and kept watching The Haunting of Hill House. We got in two episodes, which are not short. We had some wine and she had some pizza that she had brought home earlier and I had some cheesy jalapeno grits that she had brought for me.
It was super late when we turned in. Way too late. But after so much driving, I really was not ready to go to bed too much earlier. I am going to be so tired tomorrow, though, when we go to do the unloading of the truck.
It is so warm that we are running the air conditioning tonight! Hard to believe that we have to do that after we have been in seriously freezing temperatures for the last two weeks!