Days 15 and 16 (Abilene, TX to home)

Though this is the end of our trip, there will be more to the blog. We will each be posting a blog sharing our thoughts of the trip...

Days 15 (June 24) and 16 (June 25)—what can I say? Day 15 was a 10-hour drive from Abilene, TX to Meridian, MS. I took the first 6 hours and Julie took the last 4 hours. I will say that: 1) it’s hard to find anything but a country radio station through Texas and 2) it’s very convenient to drive your restroom with you. Besides a small brushfire just east of Jackson, MS in the median of the road and west-bound lanes and a minor fender bender shortly after (mostly rubber-necking), the drive was very monotonous and could not have ended sooner. When we finally hit our KOA outside Meridian, MS, I got everything hooked up and got burgers and hot dogs on the grill. Once the dishes had been taken care of, Bryce and Collin headed for the showers while Julie and I tried to get caught up on current global events. To our dismay, we were not given the password for our WI-FI connection since we arrived after office hours, so we settled in with a beer each. Because this was our last night “camping”, we thought it would be appropriate to have one last campfire. Using leftover wood that we had kept dry in one of the storage compartments on the RV and my Eagle Scout skills, I built a fire in the gravel parking lot in front of the RV. Julie pulled out the marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey’s chocolate and we all enjoyed s’mores for our evening’s dessert. Following the campfire, we headed inside where there were significantly less mosquitoes and other bugs, we played a few quick rounds of “spoons” and then headed to bed.
Day 16 saw Julie and I wake up early to get a head start for the final leg of our journey. We left camp around 7:45 to try to get back in Columbia before rush-hour traffic around “Malfunction Junction”. There was absolutely nothing that stood out on this drive through to Atlanta. We stopped in Tuscaloosa, AL to refuel and treated everybody to breakfast at McDonald’s. In Augusta, GA, we stopped once again to refuel, conveniently at a gas station / Dairy Queen, where the boys and I each got a blizzard and Julie got a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. From Augusta, we finished up the ride in just over an hour, encountering a minor thunderstorm outside of Augusta. Once we finally backed in the driveway at 4:35, everyone had specific instructions to make the un-load as stress-free and easy as possible. Once the RV was unloaded and cleaned (inside and out), Julie picked up the phone for Papa John’s for dinner, and we all just did nothing the rest of the night. We will be taking the RV back to Statesville, NC first thing in the morning and picking up Fonzie on the way back. Check back very shortly for individual final thoughts (we each will post a blog with our overall thoughts about the trip)—should be interesting! Stay tuned…