It was unfortunate that last night, while driving across Arkansas, that it all had to be done in the dark as this was my very first time ever being in the state of Arkansas and I more or less had to miss the whole thing. This morning, though, I got to get up in Memphis which I have also never seen before and we will be driving east through west Tennessee which will all be new to me until Nashville and even the stretch between Nashville and Knoxville will be new even though I have been to both of those cities previously. I have only ever traveled north to south across Tennessee and never west to east so I get to see a lot of new country.
I worked for a while this morning and was able to wrap up by eleven this morning which put us an hour ahead of schedule. We got the car loaded and attempted to hit the road right away but Jen had a soda malfunction and we had to get back out of the car and get her and the car cleaned up before we could proceed.
I took the first shift driving (which turned into the only shift) as we headed out east from Memphis to Nashville to Knoxville and from there turned north off of Interstate 40 onto Interstate 81 and went into Virginia at Bristol and up through the mountains. The weather was great. It is cold and snowing back in Dallas but we are in the sixties as we drive north. Not what we were expecting at all.
When we got up into Northern Virginia the GPS foolishly took us east from Front Royal on Interstate 66 over to Washington, DC and, due to massive failure of the GPS system, it actually dropped us off onto the Leesburg Pike in Arlington, Virginia and completely freaked out on us leaving us on our own. Luckily John and I used to live on the Leesburg Pike and I knew the area a little.
We came up into Philly from the southside via Delaware which did not seem like the most efficient approach up to Chalfont where we are staying for the week. It was about three thirty in the morning when we pulled into Wawa to get ourselves a late night snack (read: breakfast) which we took back to the house where we arrived at approximately a quarter after four and ate there.
We were so wound up from all of the driving (which I actually did all by myself) that we decided to just camp out at the bar that Brian and Tara have set up and drink rum and Cokes until eight in the morning when it was time to head off to bed. Not much sleep for me since today is now Sunday (now that the day rolled over) and I have to work today. So I will be getting three hours of sleep at maximum.