ROAD TRIP DAYS 1-2

Thursday, May 2
Odometer Reading: 45,370
Food Supply: One box of reduced fat Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies, courtesy of our good friend Reid. The cookies were gone by the time we hit Richmond, Virginia.

We left Rockville, Maryland around 7:00 p.m. tonight to drive down to North Carolina (my hometown). My grandparents graciously agreed to babysit my cat, Memphis Belle, for the duration of the journey. After the same-old boring 6 hour journey down I-95, we pulled into Warsaw, NC around 1:00 a.m. I found it difficult to sleep because I was sooo excited, so I stayed up until about 5:00 a.m. reading old issues of "Travel & Leisure" magazine.

Friday, May 3
Odometer Reading: 45,691
Food Supply: Holy Cow! A goldmine! My grandparents loaded up our little tiny cooler and gave us a huge one!
And they filled it full of cheese slices, turkey, ham, chips, cookies, goldfish crackers, you name it. We bought a few cases of Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and peach Snapple before we left Maryland, and now we had a big ol' cooler to keep them in. It was Heaven.

After having breakfast with grandmama and grandpapa, we hit the road around 10:00 a.m. (We had to get a good night's sleep, you know). After waving goodbye and gassing up the car, we headed out. Next stop: an old family favorite, South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina. Yes, believe it or not, I've been here many, many times. This was Matt's second time (he'd been there with me once before). I still couldn't convince him to eat one of Pedro's burritos. South of the Border is "blessed" with everything a good roadside attraction should be: gigantic gift shops selling dusty crap that's been sitting on the shelves since the early 1960s, awful fast food stands, giant concrete animals, and overpriced tourist crap (you have to pay to go to the bathroom)! And where else are you going to find a faux sombrero-wearing dinosaur (see pic above)? But the one thing that SOB has that sets it apart from the other is....FIREWORKS!! Yes, lots and LOTS of fireworks. It's no secret that Southerners like me LOVE to watch things blow up, pop, crackle and explode. Load up on Saturday night entertainment at SOB, but be sure to hide your booty (fireworks, as you know, are illegal in most states).

We hit SOB around noon, and stopped for a short stretch break. After SOB we basically just hit state after state in such quick succession that it's honestly all a blur now. I remember making sandwiches in a grocery store parking lot in Augusta, Georgia, and we passed by Atlanta. (It still looked the same as always, except for lots of Olympic billboards and stuff). We flirted with the idea of spending a day in Atlanta, a city I like a lot, but decided that our short time would be better spent out West. It was a good decision on our part!

The Alabama Welcome Center was a welcome (hee hee) sight around 6 p.m. We stopped to read maps, and I had a game of going to the bathroom in each state. Hey, the road makes a person do crazy, crazy things. Something I REALLY wish I would have done was taken a picture of the "Welcome To" signs in each state. My life is full of regret over that--don't make the same mistake! Do it when you hit the road! We cruised through Birmingham and the rest of the state, and we set our watches back an hour and decided to push on to Tupelo, Mississippi so we could get a head start on all those crazy old women trying to see Elvis' birthplace. We made it around 1:00 a.m.

Keep On Truckin'

Drive Home

This page was created, designed and written by Louisa Moore.