The kids have been excited beyond any level that even I anticipated. Last night Miles voluntarily got ready for bed at 7:30 PM, proclaiming, "I'm so excited ... I just want to get this over with!" "This" referring to sleep, because he knew once he woke up the trip would begin.
Today we knocked out the largest chunk of the drive, and made it in twelve hours to Chattanooga, TN. We kept track of all the license plates we could find, and accumulated a list of 27 different states today. We were rather pleased that we checked off over half of the states on Day 1! Gran also pointed out that we were going drive in or through each of our birth states today: Illinois (Miles & Emery), Indiana (Kristen), Kentucky (Gran) ... and that we would drive through Georgia (Brayer) tomorrow. Well, as fate would have it, I-24 darted of TN, and into GA, for about five miles, just before turning back toward TN and into Chattanooga. So we actually hit all of our birth states on Day 1.
Miles and Emery did a fabulous job on the drive, and were rewarded with an evening dip in the pool.
The kids immediately noticed that people in the south 'sound different,' and Miles was a quick study of our waiter at Olive Garden tonight. He has quickly mastered "Nice to see y'all!" in a southern drawl.
Tomorrow we are slowing down the pace, and only plan to advance about two hours down the road to the city of my birth, Atlanta. I can almost taste The Varsity chili dog!
