The trip to get down here was, in a word, LONG. We picked up our moving truck on July 16th, a Friday, and did most of the loading that afternoon. We had been packing slowly for a week or so before, and I don't know how we ended up with so much junk. We tried to consolidate things as much as possible and we threw away a lot of things, and we still had a lot of stuff. Mostly books. We have a ridiculous amount of books. And we took two large boxes to Half Price Books. But we could have large amounts of worse things, I suppose. We also donated several bags of clothes to St. Vincent de Paul. Anyway, after many, many trips down the hall, up and down the elevators and through the lobby we finally had the truck loaded and ready to go Saturday afternoon. Brian's parents and brother assisted us with the move. And I am more grateful for their assistance than I can express, as we had our moving truck, our 2 cars, Tas, Stella and all of our stuff to get down here. Chris was planning to fly back Wednesday but Brian's parents were staying a few days longer and were driving back, so we also had their van, and that made up our 4 car caravan.
On Saturday, we drove to Chattanooga, TN. That drive wasn't so bad. It took us somewhere between 6 and 7 hours with stops. The animals, however, didn't fare as well with the traveling. Stella rode with Brian, and she spent most of the drive laying on his passenger seat, her head resting on his center armrest, staring at him. I had the pleasure of traveling with the cat. If he's left in his cage in the car, he will cry the entire time. However, when Brian was living in Cincinnati and I was still in Dayton, he used to travel back and forth with Brian a lot and would ride on the passenger seat. In my car however, he wanted to ride under my pedals, which obviously wasn't going to work. I wanted him to ride on the passenger seat, but he wasn't having any of that either. So, we compromised.
Yes, he spent the entire trip from Cincinnati to Chattanooga on my lap.
Sunday, we left Chattanooga bright and early, headed for central Florida. Before that trip, I had been to Gatlinburg for a weekend, had a layover in the Atlanta airport, and spent a week in Key West on my honeymoon. Shortly after leaving Chattanooga, we entered Georgia. After driving through, here are my impressions: 1. Georgia is very pretty. 2. Georgia is much larger than it looks on a map. 3. At every exit, you can buy peaches, pecans, or peanuts (usually of the boiled variety). 4. There are a lot of "massage parlors" with free truck parking. 4. There are more billboards advertising the peaches, pecans, peanuts, massage parlors, and anything else you can imagine than I've ever seen anywhere else. Seriously, the highways are just lined with them. We stopped for lunch somewhere south of Macon, and we went to Krystal. Brian informed me that I hadn't had a true Southern experience until I ate at Krystal. For all you Northerners, Krystal is basically White Castle with a few more options. I opted out of the steamed sliders and got the mini coney dogs instead.
It wasn't terrible, but I don't think I would choose to eat there again any time soon.
Not too long after we stopped for lunch, we finally made it to Florida! I was excited for a second, until I realized that we still had a long road ahead of us. If I thought Georgia was a big state, Florida is huge. We drove a few hours into Florida before we stopped for the evening Sunday, and we were still looking at a 4-5 hour drive Monday. We left bright and early again on Monday, but we opted to take a smaller, alternate highway instead of staying on 75 because traffic had been so heavy the previous day. This proved to be a good and bad decision. For awhile, we were traveling on a 2 lane highway through towns that had lower speed limits and stoplights. This added some extra time to our already long drive. However, it eventually opened up and we were able to cruise along at a good speed with little traffic.
Once we got into Miami, we had a little mix-up with our directions (it's important that our address is 142nd Avenue, NOT Street), but we finally made it to our apartment around 3pm. And that was our trip down. I'll post more about our apartment and Miami next time, but for now, here are a few more pictures from the trip.
