Always An Adventure

So Friday we left Georgia and made it through thick traffic outside of Atlanta and arrived in Charlotte, NC later than we’d planned (due to the traffic.) We quickly unloaded so that we could check out the town. I have to say it is one of the prettiest cities I’ve been in. Trees and greenery everywhere. Brick homes, a darling downtown (uptown) area. Our whole family was charmed.

We headed out on Saturday with no clue as to how many more “lines” we’d be in. Once again we ran into several thick traffic situations in Virginia and we kept thinking “where are all of these people going?” Just crawling on the freeway is frustrating when it creeps into your vacation time and you only have a day in a city!

So we finally stop in a small city at a Wendy’s. There were tons of cars in the parking lot and we go inside to find a super long line. I grab a table, tell my husband what I want and go sit down. Let me just say that at one point the line was longer than when we entered. It went halfway around the inside of the restaurant! They only had one register working I guess.

The girls and I were going to use the restroom before we left and the line was too long so we figured we could use a rest stop up the road. We waited a good hour or two before my husband decided he’d also get gas. We pull off into one small town and the lines from the gas stations (two of them) are out the parking lot onto the road. What the heck? There was no way we were waiting in those! We decided to go further since we still had some gas. We went maybe a half hour or 45 more minutes up the road and pulled off to another busy gas station. By this time, we are all getting frustrated with having to wait everywhere we go.

My husband is trying to find the lane that is moving the quickest and the girls and I run inside to use the restroom. While in the bathroom, I hear a lady talking about how the gas stations are out of power but this one is starting to work. Oh my goodness – what? I talk to her afterwards and she explains that all the gas stations south are still out of power so if we need gas to get it here because this station was working a little.

I run out to tell my husband as he was just pulling up to a pump from the line. Several other people come over to see if ours was working and only the most expensive gas was working but we decided to go for it. Everything was starting to make sense.

I guess there was a huge storm in Virginia, Ohio, DC, and West Virginia the night before. Power was out and a lot of things were affected. Gas stations. The register at Wendy’s down – etc. Click. It was all making sense.

We didn’t care at this point about saving $5. We got the most expensive gas and were on our way. Heading into DC amidst rumors that power was out and another storm was coming.

Luckily, the power was NOT out in our motel. Nor did another bad storm come. But we did see tree limbs down all over and broken trees. The residue from the storm was apparent. So glad we missed it by one day!

That was the good news. The bad news was that our motel got our room wrong. We were supposed to have two queen beds but instead we had one king bed and a pull-out couch. As the motel was booked full, there was nothing we could do. Bless my girls’ hearts as they cheerily said it was okay and they could deal with it.

We unloaded, found directions to the metro and ran into the city for a few hours. We walked at least a mile to the Lincoln memorial, World War 2, Korean and Vietnam Memorials. We got caught in a little rain but nothing bad and we collapsed back our motel near 11pm. We hadn’t had dinner and so we ordered a pizza and ended up eating a delicious hot Dominoes pizza at midnight. It hit the spot enough to fill our tired and empty tummies. (Thanks Dominoes!)

Sunday, we didn’t get up quite as early, but still headed out in the morning. We visited the White House, the American History Smithsonian, National Archives, Canadian Embassy, and the Capitol. We didn’t make it to the Library of Congress before it closed. Boo!

Let me just say the day was HOT. HOT and HUMID. We were dripping. But all in all it was a good day and a shower has never felt so good! We finally got in fairly early and had time to do a little laundry and just relax for a few. It was needed.

Tomorrow we are headed into Philadelphia as our journey continues.  Thank you so much for your faithful prayers. We continue to embrace them as we travel on.