Doug strongly prefers to leave from Brett's when we are driving to Florida. I completely understand his rational as it cuts about four hours off of the trip. When we are driving with any of the Heinisch children it also makes it a lot easier on them as Doug doesn't like to stop a lot. The biggest draw back to his plan for me is that I usually do not sleep well at Brett's the night before we leave. I don't know if it is the change in atmosphere or the anticipation of the trip. Either way, it is usually a rough night for me. Last night was no acceptation. I fell asleep quickly but was wide awake at 2 a.m. I tried everything to go back to sleep, but nothing worked. I did my best to make sure that I did not wake up Doug as his sleep was more important than mine since he would be doing the majority of the driving today. Some time after 4 a.m. I finally drifted back off to sleep. I was thankful for that, but it did make for a challenging 6 a.m. wake up call.
All went well getting out the door and picking up Nick and Meg. By 6:40 a.m. we were on the way, excited to be going to Florida. Meg and Cameron slept for several hours missing almost all of Kentucky. Everyone was wide awake, however, by the time we stopped just south of Nashville. Doug had a work call to make and we were glad to stretch our legs. Everyone was pleased that the first third of our trip had gone so well. We were scheduled to be in Ocala by 7:30 p.m.
That all changed shortly after we got back in the car. We set our GPS for Buc-ee's just north of Atlanta and realized that the time had crept up a half hour or so. We soon figured out why as we ran into stopped traffic in Chattanooga that was caused by several accidents. It took awhile to get through the rest of Tennessee, but we made it Georgia and on to Buc-ee's for lunch only 40 minutes late. Everyone else on I-75 must have had the same idea as the place was packed. We had fun, however, looking at the merchandise and picking out our sandwiches. Doug had just finished up talking to Hetal when we got back to the car.
We reset the GPS on Doug's phone to Ocala and started heading toward Atlanta. That's when both of us became concerned. The time had increased to 8:45 which was a lot later than I had thought that we'd arrive in Florida. Doug wasn't really surprised. By the time we had reached the north side of Atlanta, we realized that there was a 45 minute backup downtown. We decided to follow the new route on the phone and get off of the interstate. I was a little nervous, but we navigated the streets of Atlanta well and were soon back on I-75 gaining a half hour of time. That changed, however, when we got south of Atlanta as there were several more backups. We decided at that time that everyone must be roadtripping to the Sunshine State and that we might as well just accept that fact that we were going to arrive a lot later than we expected.
We did stop one more time in Valdosta, Georgia. It only added another level of frustration to our trip as the gas stations were packed and the Circle K that we stopped at did not have Diet Coke. A quick run through the drive-thru at Arby's solved the problem and soon we were back on the road without traffic and a new end time of 9:40 p.m. It was definitely later than we had planned, but once we stopped at Marco's to pick up pizza for dinner, we were all smiles. It was warm outside and we had arrived safely after the 15 hour trip. Plus, we had a great week in Florida planned and Doug said that the guy at the register even recognized him. I took that as a sign that we were "home."
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