Day 12

-Thursday morning we woke up early and broke camp and hit the road. Everyone grabbed a hot breakfast from the kitchen of the camp we were staying at. They cooked up made-to-order pancakes and waffles behind a plexiglass window, which I really appreciated. We emptied our tanks, filled our bellies, and hit the road. It was a great day for driving- bright and sunny, although a little cool and we actually needed the heat on. Learning that it was only 33 degrees back home was not pleasant. Our plan was to get to Chattanooga, TN by the end of the day, but we kept running into delays for accidents so we only got as far as Atlanta. So many people were detoured because of this one especially terrible accident that caused such long delays all day that all the RV parks up and down the interstate were already full by the time we decided to give up and stop at 8pm. That was by far the longest day we had done in the bus. One thing that had surprised us early on in the bus was how much the ride just beats you up. We are able to drive 10 hours a day in our van without a problem. But in the bus, 4 hours feels like 10 and by the end of 5 hours we are desperate to stop for the day. That hadn't mattered much on the way down to Georgia because we had hopped all the way down by stopping overnight to see things. But on the full day trip we were not looking forward to 8 hours in the bus. We decided to break it up half way and stop for an hour to rest and Jared and I literally climbed in bed and took a nap in one of our least favorite towns- Macon, GA. That really helped and I think on long travel days we will need to do that from now on. Also tracking down more road noise spots to plug up will help A LOT. Also flat driving is SO MUCH easier than mountain driving days. The mountains in the bus were rough. But despite a good driving day of 8 hours we hadn't made it past Atlanta by 8pm because of the traffic so we parked in a Walmart parking lot and sent Coleson to pick up Chick-fil-A. We let the big kids stay up to watch a movie while we tucked the littles in bed and went to bed early ourselves. Being able to divide off the front living area from the bedrooms has been so helpful!