Safe In Georgia

Friday night, as we all crawled into bed (very strange sharing a room with your children!), I snuggled into Bill, kissed him goodnight, and told him I loved him. He said “I love you too.”…….all of the sudden, we heard in unison…”We love you too”—followed by hysterical giggles. Of course, we were laughing before long too. We finally got everyone settled and off to sleep. Needless to say, it was not a good night. Not sure if it was the excitement, the long day, or the strange surroundings, but everyone was restless. Ryan did some sleep walking at 5am (I thought he was awake)—he had gotten dressed, and was gathering his PSP from the floor. Once I told him to get back in bed, he laid down, and was snoring in seconds. It was only then did I realize that he was asleep—after our chatting had woken Bill & Kristin. Since it was almost 5:30, Bill got in the shower, we packed up and hit the road.

We traveled from Stockton, down I-5 and had a great travel day. We passed into Arizona, where we encountered a foot and a half of snow that had just fallen hours before in Flagstaff. Praise God that all we had was some icy patches at 7,000 feet. We decided to continue down to a lower elevation for the night! We ended up in Albuquerque New Mexico for the night, at 5,000 feet. It was COLD up there, and we woke to 17 degrees.

We saw some beautiful things on Saturday. The sun was shining, we had 55 degrees in California before we headed up into the mountain passes. We saw the windmill forest in Tanachapi and we were above 5000 all day on Saturday. We traveled 1050 miles, and spent 17 hours in the car/on the road.

On Sunday morning, we woke at 5:30 (our time, which was 6:30 local time) to Ryan standing next to the bed with Krsitin’s PSP. He appeared to be getting ready to go, and although he mumbled something when I asked him where he was going, it was indecipherable! I figured he was sleeping again, so told him to crawl back into bed, which he did, and fell fast asleep. Lucky for him…not so lucky for me! I got up and showered, as did Bill…and we loaded the truck, gassed up, got coffee and hit the road around 8am, which was almost 9 local time. We saw a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, and then shortly after we departed, it clouded over, and continued to stay cold. Everywhere we stopped, people told us how this is not normal! Figures!

We covered Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and are staying in West Memphis on the border of Tennesee/Arkanansas. We will head off in the morning after a good nights sleep, and arrive at Tam & Eric’s sometime tomorrow afternoon….hopefully in time for supper.

Some funny things from Sunday:

-We saw a road called “Toad Suck Road” (now who and how did that get it’s name?)
-We were discussing how at 2:30 we hadn’t traveled as far by that time as the day before because we started later and lost two hours, to which Kristin said very seriously “Where did they go?”

Thanks for the prayers. We have either missed storms, or the ones they called for were not as bad. There were to be 50 MPH winds today and they didn’t start until late Sunday night—just about the time we decided to stop.

We covered lots of states, 1045 miles, and 15 hours of driving. A fun place to eat was “The Pig Out Palace”. Great food….

Catching some ZZZZ's........

We stayed in West Memphis TN for the night, and hit the road at 7AM (actually 8AM Eastern Time)--spirits were high after we got on the road, after getting the truck warm (it was 14 degrees when we got up) as it was our last day on the road! We went drove through Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and finally, Georgia. We arrived at Tam & Eric's around 5pm, to a great supper of Chili. It is nice to be out of the car!

Giant Cross--very awesome

Thanks to all of you for the prayers for our safe journey. We will keep you posted over the next week. The kids are already having a great time, and playing games. We hope this lasts all week!