Alabama Tracks

Some interesting facts before I recount the past day or so…

Travel time to Ken and Chris’s house… ~6 hours
Travel time to Tia and Davis’… ~5.5 hours

Distance to Ken and Chris’s house… ~365 miles
Distance to Tia and Davis’… ~362 miles

Life is funny that way…

So we visited with Tia and David after our brief trip to the Biltmore. It was quite fun. We arrived at a Charismatic Presbyterian church. It seemed to be an oxymoron but there it was, Presbyterians with their hands in the air! Tia made a very nice birthday picnic lunch for Erin. We went to the Maryville Greenbelt to picnic. Tia made some very nice chocolate chip cake with chocolate frosting. Comfort food!

We then proceeded to wander around stroll through the Greenbelt. We got lost took a lazy meandering path through the woods until David, Andrew and I had to return for the vehicles to pick the exhasted ladies up. (just kidding!) We went back to their 940 square feet apartment and watched Napoleon Dynamite (I still love technology…) Andrew seemed to enjoy his new (or rather second generation) Boy Scout gear I had left over. I think he would have tried to camp out right then and there if we had let him. Tia’s dinner salad was also quite nice. I put some of it in my pocket for later….

We spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express. This morning I fixed Social Security.

We started off the day with pancakes from Tia. She used a griddle which allowed me to extol the virtues of getting a stovetop model for us. Someday. It will happen, trust me… We then were off to try and pick some sort of undisclosed agricultural product. I never did find out what it was we were going to pick. David got lost took us on a long scenic tour of rural Tennessee. After a while their van got fed up a David and decided to call him a jerk. Erm, wait, I mean it started jerking. Not a good sign. So we turned around and began to pray that the van would make it to the repair place. Tia called us multiple times. Something about sweaty babies and wrong turns. I couldn’t tell because we had fed the sugar Tia had just bought to Celia and Andrew to placate them (Rowan was bought off with a mere stuffed donkey) and, at that very moment, it was taking effect. Who needs Ritalin? Sassafras sticks are much cheaper!

Well, we made it but, of course, the car place was busy. Thankfully the Greenbelt was literally across the street so we loaded up the cooler in our car and drove next to it while the gang walked over and we picniced out AGAIN! No wonder why Tia likes that place. Every day is a picnic! So we ate out and waited for the car place to call. $720 OUCH! David was promptly sent in to negotiate and came back with a much more reasonable $640. So we said our goodbyes to the kids and Tia at the park and drove David and the cooler back to their apartment where he got his car and returned to the park and we drove back.

I75 was packed. I mean it was crazy. People weaving in and out. Driving like maniacs. It didn’t get better after I40 split off and remained heavy all the way to Chattanooga. Then we got on I24. I24 through Chattanooga is much worse because you go up and down far more mountains through the middle of a city. Longest 16 miles of the whole trip. I59 was back to normal thankfully and we stopped in Georgia for gas. Georgia has no state gas tax for all of Sept and it proved to be wise as we didn’t see any gas that cheap until we returned home. The good news is that gas prices do seem to be coming down from the spike Katrina caused.

I65 seemed to have caught some of I75’s vibe because it was heavy too. But we made good time. From the time we left we only made one stop for gas and drove through for dinner.

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