Road Trip 2015: Day 1

The vacation we look forward to all year: Road Trip 2015. Woo hoo!

Our lengthy road trips involve LOTS of planning. Hours and hours. I enjoy it. And the kids help.

And sometimes all of the planning gets thrown out the window.

Our plan was to leave on Monday, July 13th and drive to Louisville, then Nauvoo. At 11 pm on Sunday July 12th, as I was finishing up last minute prepping, Uncle Alex called. He wanted me to know that a terrible storm was predicted to come through Louisville on Monday night and DON'T come through town. He recommended taking a more southern route.

Ummm... OK. Throw plan A in the trash. Time for plan B. I stayed up WAYYYYY too late planning  a new route, a new fun stop, booking a hotel. What a mess great adventure!

We woke up Monday morning 

and packed up the van.

This is what it takes for two adults

and three kids to be gone for six weeks:

And these are the two adults and three kids ready to road trip!

Our new southerly route took us to Knoxville, TN.

We stopped at The Muse, a fun science center...

only to find out that THEY CLOSED AT NOON.

Grrrrrr....This was not a good start.

They had a zoo we could have visited,

but it was over 90* and humid. That didn't sound so fun.

I got on my phone and looked up fun things to do in Knoxville.

I decided to take us to Ijams Nature Center.

It had great reviews and the price was right. (Free!)

Bad idea. Really bad.

If I could go back in time, I would NOT take us to Ijams!
(Not that it's a terrible place, just not the right fit for us.)

We started off on a nice, leisurely river walk.

It was beautiful and shaded. 

With benches along the way to take a rest. 

Sweet bonding time!

But...it went downhill pretty quickly. We took a wrong turn. And ended up at going up a hill that was too much for Grandma Cuca. She ended up tripping over the roots of a tree and falling. Noooooo! It was terrible. THANKFULLY, she was only bruised and didn't break anything. Brandon had run ahead and I couldn't find him. We had a guardian angel help us out, though. A wonderful, kind gentleman who was out hiking with his wife and daughter helped Grandma back down the hill and made sure she was safe. SO grateful for the service of strangers!

After catching her breath, we slowly made our way along a different non-inclined path that took us back to the parking lot. Phew.

We got some cold drinks and continued driving toward Clarksville, TN, where we had booked our hotel for the night.

As we were cruising along, enjoying the green scenery of Tennessee, Andrew called to check on us. He asked how our morning was and I told him about all the drama with the closed museum and Grandma falling. He very gently said, "Well...continuing on that theme of a rough start... I came home from work and your suitcase is packed and sitting outside our bedroom door..."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????

Nope. He was not. I had done all that wonderful packing in the back of the van...but had failed to bring my own suitcase in from outside. D'oh!!!

Andrew suggested that I just buy a new wardrobe. But I am so picky and have a hard time finding clothes that fit and that sounded like more trouble (and expense) than it was worth. Then he offered to overnight the bag to our next stop. But that is a BIG, HEAVY bag. I can't imagine how much that would have cost. Instead, I asked very nicely if he would drop whatever he had planned for that evening and I would turn around and we could meet in the middle to get my suitcase. My wonderful, amazing, selfless husband said, "Of course!" 

So we turned around. And headed back to NC.

I canceled my hotel in Clarksville. Yep, the one I had just booked the night before. They must have thought I was crazy.

And instead I booked hotel in Asheville, NC. 

We drove for 9 hours on day one and ended up staying the night in NORTH CAROLINA.

Wow, what a day.

HUGE thanks to Andrew for saving the day!

And then it was back to my laptop to find a new route, new fun stops, new hotels...

This is craziness! Not the way I would have preferred for day one to go, but at least we were all safe and had suitcases by the end of the night.