Time to head for home...

Monday, May 5, 2008:

As Mom used to say, "Our vacation is oooovvvvveeeerrrr." Yep, it is. It's time to start traveling west. Time to leave the beautiful green trees, colorful flowers and rolling hills of South Carolina. Those beautiful-looking rolling hills covered with bushes and trees that make you feel boxed in compared to the flat lands where you can see for miles and miles in Kansas.

This time it's not just a tan van traveling west, but a little blue tag-along is following behind. And somehow that little blue bug on the road sticks to us like a magnet. No matter where we go, it just keeps on trucking on behind. :)

We left at 8am this morning. Dad and I are in the van and Jena and Krissa are in her PT Cruiser. I look back and can see those two girls laughing and having fun in the front seat of Krissa's car.

At least with two drivers per vehicle, we can trade off driving and get some rest (or computer time) here and there. We are planning to drive straight through from state to state until we reach home. It's always more of a challenge driving at night, especially trying to follow someone, but we all agreed we wanted to drive straight through if we could. And that's the plan.

We call each other, stop from time to time, but most of the time just keep on driving. We took a little unexpected detour in St. Louis because of road construction and made Jena, who was driving at the time, go through two red lights to keep up. Krissa, sitting in the passenger's seat, kept telling Jena that if she got a speeding ticket in her PT Cruiser that she was making Jena pay for it!!! Thankfully that didn't happen.

It's almost 10pm and dark which makes it a little tougher for that little blue magnet to stay stuck to the tan van. But they're keeping up and keeping pace with us without running us over. Something Krissa is likely to do when she is driving. :)

We are almost to Kansas City and that starts the last 6 hours of our journey. Hopefully we should be home by 4 or 5 am. Home to my own bed. Home to Skittles, who hopefully hasn't torn up the house. Home to Lady who I'm sure thinks we've left her for good. Home to just...well...home.

We're getting ready to stop and change drivers. I'll take over for Dad and Krissa for Jena. Thankfully I think they've finally stopped laughing back there in that little blue thing. :)

It's now 3:30am Tuesday morning and I just finished driving for the last several hours. I have to admit, it's a little dark and scary driving at night on these nearly desolete roads in Kansas in the wee hours of the morning when everyone should be sleeping.

Thankfully we did make it home safely at 4:30 and were glad to be home. We unloaded the van and Krissa's car and just literally dumped everything in the family room before crawling into bed for a few hours of sleep.

that little blue magnet right behind us...:)

Sometime she got ahead of us, but...



...we soon caught back up to her!!!



the backseat of the van with all Krissa's stuff

I crawled back on top of all the stuff in the back
to take photos of the girls behind us. :)

Just unloaded and waiting for Krissa to put up! How she packed
all this and more into her dorm room, I don't have a clue!