No, we're not going back. Sigh.
Thought I'd throw in a honeymoon post! :)
Did y'all know we drove to our wedding? 1700 and some odd miles together in a car. If you live through that and still love each other, you can get married. :) So we did.
Here's our car, packed for a wedding palooza...two days before we got married. (Where's Ryan?)
We set out, all smiles and READY TO GET MARRIED!!!
I'll do a better post on this later, but I took a stack of activities to keep us occupied, entertained, and AWAKE while we drove. We did the first one around Indianapolis...and it was travel bingo! One guess as to who won...
He takes these things so humbly.
And the evening before the morning...was the first day of our day together in the car....
Georgia, perhaps? Maybe Tennessee. I lost track. At any rate. It was night. A blurry sort of night. This explains how we were starting to feel:
So...nothing fixes that like stopping for a stretch and for some COFFEE!!!
We played more games...at this point truly just trying to stay awake:
About quarter til 1 in the morning (having been on the road for almost 12 hours at that point) we stopped at a rest stop in who-knows-where Georgia for a little shut eye. I took a blanket and rested it against the door and leaned over to go to sleep. Ryan put a pillow against my shoulder and leaned over to sleep. He was out in approximately .000000000008 seconds. About an hour later, I FINALLY fell asleep only to awaken immediately to a school bus load of hooligans (sorry - but at 2 a.m. a busload of people waking me up at a rest stop deserve the term hooligans) awakened me as they noisily disembarked and headed to the restroom.
For those of you dying to know what I look like at 3 a.m. at a rest stop after about an hour of sleep:
Ryan had the
nerve courage to laugh at me when we woke up because we took a bathroom break before hitting the road again...and well...I've seen too many episodes of Criminal Minds. That is THE FASTEST bathroom break I've ever taken. I did not want to be fodder for a new episode.
Breakfast at about 4 a.m. after an hour or so on the road.
Eventually came the morning....
And please, if you will, envision THE funniest picture here of Ryan asleep with his mouth WIDE open. He asked me not to post it, which is a real travesty because I promise you'd love it. But he so rarely bans a picture that I am compelled to say okay. :)
It was about 10 a.m. when we were LITERALLY 10 minutes from our resort...and about 3 hours ahead of the time we'd hoped to arrive. That's when we encountered this:
And here's how we felt about it:
This was before I started crying. I had been in this car for approaching 24 hours at this point, I was hungry (and you KNOW how it is when something comes between me and my fat grams) and I was SO tired. Thank you, bus hooligans. We closed the sunroof to protect our wedding cakes from the heat coming down from the sun (on the 80 degree day) and randomly ate some snacks from our bag (but no drinking, because, you know, NO BATHROOMS!)...
No end in sight. You'd have cried too
FINALLY we made it to our exit, where we learned the reason for the holdup was the Tough Mudder in town. This whole line resulted in a line of people waiting to turn left at the end of our exit ramp. (Where, incidentally, we turned right.)
Never in my life was I so happy to see a destination:
Ryan got us all checked in at the
Tropical Beach Resorts and I (bearing NO makeup at this point and smelling rather...well...smelly) made the one simple request to take pictures of our room before we dumped an entire carload of wedding into it.
Before we settled in, we wandered down to see the beach:
I hate it that he looks so good after a day in the car and I look like...I spent two days in the car.
I was so so so so tired that I felt sick. So while Ryan unpacked all our stuff, I slept.
Or I tried. It didn't go very well.
When I got up, I took a shower and tried to start over, hoping it would make me feel better. We had a party that night with our family and wedding party and I wanted to look better. (It was a fail.)
So that's how we got to Florida! And it was also how both of us VOWED we'd never again sleep at a rest stop. Ever.
4 comments:
In the words of Yoda..... Future Sleep at a rest stop... You will.
Not on purpose! :)
Having driven to Florida twice I understand the challenges! It would be more enjoyable for us if we had more time to drive AND spend there instead of the majority of our time being in the "driving" phase. (smile). Hotels do make this easier when we can (there's a great La Quinta Inn in Dalton, Georgia btw!) Rest stops come in handy to save money and to make the most of the time. That said, we try to make our journey part of the destination when we can. In YOUR case, however, with getting married being the destination, I don't think that was possible. (SMILE)
Delta - that would be a long drive for you too!! We did the rest stop thing so we didn't have to get two hotel rooms. Nice part was on the way back...we were married and could stay in the same room! YAY!!!
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