It's A Long Long Drive...

It's a long, long drive from Memphis to Mount Carmel.

Dad and I set out earlier today at 7:00am, and we drove until about 6:00pm. For our first stop, we halted 80 miles into the trip in Jackson, TN, for a Dunkin Donuts breakfast. That's a good way to start any day, in my opinion, but an even better way to start a day full of staring at asphalt.

Generally speaking, interstate driving is boring. However, there is sometimes the occassional Bible Belt bumper sticker to entertain me or the occassional confederate flag-bearer with gun rack to scare me. This drive proved a bit more challenging because my dad was following in the moving truck, which can only cruise around 70 miles per hour.

My friend Bridget hooked me up with some high quality mixed CDs. Luckily, Bridget was a teenager in the 80s so "mixed tapes" are somewhat her speciality. This kept me interested in the drive because I never knew what song was coming next.

About 420 miles into the trip, I was starting to feel a bit tired. So I thought eating some trail mix one peanut or m&m at a time would keep me energized or at least awake. It's nice of Planters to make bags of food with the easy tear off strips. It's not nice of Planters when you tear off the strip and the bag still doesn't open. I wrestled with this stupid bag of trail mix for 10 minutes, trying aimlessly to rip the bag apart at the fancy resealable opening while trying not to wreck the car. After this struggle, I was about to lose my mind so I found a pen and stabbed a giant hole in the bag right near the Mr. Peanut. Take that, trail mix! That made me feel better. Then I proceeded to eat 4 of the 5 servings in the next 30 minutes. That didn't make me feel better.

We stopped for gas when we finally crossed into Virginia, and then proceeded to Roanoke where we settled in for the night. Thankfully, we were able to get a good dinner at a Cracker Barrell and stay in a Holiday Inn Express, where they have free internet and breakfast. Always a plus. And in case you're really tired from your travels, they even tell you which pillow you might want to use. You know, in case you weren't functional enough to figure this out on your own.