Texas to Georgia

We left Beaumont, TX in the morning and arrived in Duluth, GA (outside of Atlanta) in the evening. Go ahead - google map that -- yep that's 733 miles. Loooong day of driving, yes - with the new dog. She was great.

Some highlights:

• Driving through the bayous of Louisiana. At one point we were on a bridge only about 20 feet above the swampy marshes for about 25 miles. The kids were looking for aligators, but alas found none


• Mississippi. They simply beat to a different drum there. We stopped for lunch at a Hardees and we had a few strange looks at the New Hampshire license plate.


• Montgomery, AL. For some re-donk-ulous reason, the GPS thought it would be cool to get off in downtown Montgomery at rush hour instead of take the simple highway junction to I-85. However, we did drive past Rosa L. Parks Blvd. where history was made some 50 yeras ago.


• Atlanta at night. Beautiful city. The kids really liked the lights of Hot-lan-ta.

We finally got to the hotel around 9:30 and ate our wonderfully nutritious McDonald's for dinner. Awful sick of the fast food now.

One more exciting highlight - as a result of my trip to the planet Mercury (the beach at South Padre Island) my back now has raised and exploding blisters on it and sweet Jesus - does it itch! So I went out at 12:30 AM to the only store that was open - WalMart - to get some advil and some anti-itch lotion. Have you been to a WalMart at 12:30 aM lately? I noticed that there aren't many nuns that shop at that time of day.

Apparently there were several teenagers to twenty-somethings in gang attire that were also in pain at that time. The pain reliver section of WalMart was extremely popular. They seemed healthy from the outside, but who am I to judge. Anyhow, made it back to the hotel in one piece and slept comfortably.

More tomorrow...