With Karissa sent off on an airplane and the RV in storage, the kids and I had nothing but hotel rooms, eating out, and miles of open road in our future. Karissa told, no, begged us to take our time getting home. I had plans of stopping at attractions in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Metropolis along the way. But as is wont to happen, life doesn’t go according to plan.
We woke up that first morning in the hotel, had a leisurely breakfast, and headed north. The plan to do something in Atlanta was tossed somewhere along the way. We stopped for lunch about an hour south of Atlanta at a McDonald’s PlayPlace, a road trip staple for us. The kids burned off some energy and we got back in the truck. Getting PAST Atlanta before the work week rolled around became a logical choice. The kids did fine in the car all day until we hit Atlanta and the Sunday afternoon traffic. Thus, the final hour or so of driving was less than pleasant. We settled for the night in Kennesaw, Georgia.
On our second day of driving, I really wanted to do something more fun for the kids than McDonald’s. I remembered some cool signs for “Rock City” near Chattanooga. But looking it up, it didn’t seem that great for my young kids. Next idea was to stop in Nashville and do something, but battling that traffic didn’t sound fun either. So the final choice was to stop and see the Superman stuff in Metropolis, Illinois. Just 5 hours from Kennesaw, Georgia. We were set to arrive around 1:00pm, which would be perfect for a late lunch and some time at the attractions. But midwest weather (cold rain) nixed that idea. We settled for another McDonald’s PlayPlace, which the kids loved. Obviously, we’re raising some sophisticated children! At 3:00, after a long time at the PlayPlace, we had a tough choice: drive another 4-5 hours home or find a nearby hotel and finish in the morning. After a phone call with Karissa…and her begging us to slow down and not be home tonight, we chose to stay in a hotel and the kids played in our room until collapsing at 9:30pm CENTRAL time. We’d been going to bed at 7:30-8:30 EASTERN time. Oh, well.
We got up and had another hotel breakfast. The only other person down there, other than the front desk gal, was ~50 year old man with a dark grey beard. Emerson kept saying “That’s Ho Ho.” Over and over. When the man left, Emerson said “Bye bye Ho Ho.” The front desk gal laughed. Adelaide laughed. I was embarrassed thinking about the next few months with Emerson thinking every man with a beard is Santa. We got in the car a bit before 8:00am. GPS said we’d be home at 11:40. Karissa called and said we should have lunch with her. Her lunch started at 11:36. GPS challenge accepted. Emerson slept until we got into town. Adelaide took a nap too! We got to town at 11:37 and met up at ….. McDonald’s ….. for lunch with Karissa. The kids were excited to see her. And I was too.
After lunch, we pulled into our now empty driveway. No RV in sight. It had been there from June through December. 6 months. It was strange not to have to be careful entering the driveway and then walk around the rig.
What did our kids do after spending 3 weeks living in a 34 x 8 RV and the last 3 days driving in a car? Sit together inside of a hula hoop, of course! Karissa and I would have thought they’d want to be as far apart as possible for a while, but we were wrong!
Remember me saying Karissa begged us to take our time getting home? And then pleaded for us to stay in a hotel rather than finish the drive on Monday night? I thought she was just really enjoying her life as a single woman with no kids or husband. While that was true, she also had been working really hard on various projects in the house. She re-caulked our shower. She touched up the walls in Adelaide’s room. She made the house sparkling clean. Painted our new tv stand. And finished Adelaide’s picture display. I might have left something off. It was a great surprise to see all that she’d done. We need to paint the doors of the new TV stand to finish it.
Old $10 TV stand. 
New, solid wood, white TV stand. 
So that’s it. We’re back to “normal” life. We did our usual library reading time on Wednesday. Adelaide went to preschool and dance class on Thursday. Karissa and I played volleyball. Grandma came over again for a few hours on Friday. And then it snowed. A lot of snow. The 2 inches in the forecast wound up being 5-8 inches before it all compacted down to something close to 4 inches. I shoveled 3 times. But at least the snow meant temperatures in the 30s instead of the teens we’d had the last few days. Such is winter in Northern Illinois.
Our mini-project today was finally putting all of our beach sand into display tubes. We’ve been collecting sand at (almost) every beach we’ve visited since starting our RV trip in 2017. We forgot Vanderbilt Beach in Naples, Florida, but luckily Karissa’s parents brought us a sample over the summer. I think the fascination with beach sand started on our honeymoon in San Diego. The sand on top was white, but dig down a foot or so and it became black. We thought it was due to wetness. We brought both black sand and white sand home. Since then, it’s definitely dried out. And is still black and white. Anyhow, the plan is to expand the sand display to all beaches we visit together. It’s amazing to see all of the different mixtures of colors, textures, and shells from the various beaches.
So that was our big week of driving home and resuming our normal life. We hope your had a great week too.
