The Christmas Adventure: Chapter 3

The Return Drive: why Georgia is now my least favorite state

Ahhh... the joys of three in the morning (actually it was three in the morning Illinois time, which is two in the morning Florida time). At least the roads were clear. Nothing was open, but there was no traffic! Again, I'm not sure how this part of the drive went; I pretty much slept through Illinois and didn't wake up until Kentucky, when my stomach started to growl. Mark blew my mind: he drove for almost 7 hours straight! I offered to drive, but he didn't want me driving through Atlanta again. So we drove. Kentucky and Tennessee went by quickly, as did the first hour of Georgia. And then Atlanta hit.

It was about 1:30 in the afternoon. Traffic was heavy, but nothing too bad, until three quarters of the way through Atlanta, we hit a traffic jam. In fact, we were in bumper to bumper traffic practically the ENTIRE length of Georgia. Which is why Georgia is now my least favorite state. We lost two hours sitting on the highway waiting. We weren't sure what for. Eventually we discovered that some genius *note the excessive sarcasm* decided that, gee, wouldn't it be great if I 75 was three lanes all the way through Georgia? And yes, that would be nifty, I'm sure. But PLEASE don't EVER have more than 5 miles of a road blocked off for construction at one time!!! NOT COOL, PEOPLE! And what ever you do, DON'T EVER, EVER, BLOCK OFF AN ENTIRE HIGHWAY DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON!!!!! And that is why I don't ever want to drive through Georgia again. I'm sure the people are lovely, they just need better decision makers.

Thanks to the brilliant minds of Georgia's road construction people, we didn't get back into Bradenton, Florida until about 10:30 pm, instead of the 8:30 we had been planning on. And we still had to take Grandma's car through the carwash, and unload and switch cars. Needless to say, that after leaving at 3 am (2 am Florida time) we didn't get home until 12:15 am. That's right. A drive which, on the way up, had only taken us 19 hours, was transformed into a 22 hour return trip. I am never driving again. From now on, people, if you want to see me, you can spend 20 some odd hours in a car with a car sick cat and traffic jams in Georgia and drive down here!

And that was our Christmas Adventure. I suppose it wasn't very adventurous, but we had fun, despite all the icky things that happened on the road.

The End.