So, what do you do when your boy graduates from high school, turns 18 two weeks later, and is slated to ship off with the US Army in less than two months? You plan a trip for just the two of you, that's what you do. You also base the trip on one of your favorite shared movies, Smokey and the Bandit. We left home this morning around 8 AM looking all fresh-faced and smiling, and landed in Alpharetta, GA tired and road weary.
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| Here we go! |
We stopped a few times along the way. The first one was in Charlotte, NC, home of the Panthers! No pictures of the stadium to share here, but we stopped at Johnson and Wales University and had a great lunch from the "chuck box". Sandwiches, fruit, and no-bake cookies. Beautiful day to eat outside. Sun was gorgeous and the breeze was perfect!
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| Go WILDCATS! |
After stopping for lunch in North Carolina, we traveled on southward and drove through South Carolina. We made two stops there. One was to capture the grandeur of this giant peach water tower in Gaffney, SC. It looks like a giant butt! I couldn't stop laughing about it. We made some truly off-color jokes about it and laughed a good bit at the peach's expense.
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| Look a the GIANT BUTT! |
Once we snapped these few pics, we moved onto a place called Strawberry Fields. It was a bit like our Country Basket orchard stand back home, mixed with The Creamery (but on a smaller scale.) We bought really good milk shakes and Christian bought the biggest peach I had ever seen (bigger than his fist). He said it was good. He ate it in the car on the way.
We sat in traffic for about an hour in Greenville, SC due to an accident on BOTH sides of the highway. Once we started up a good clip and made it about 30 miles, we slowed down again. This time it was on our side of the highway. Someone decided to drive his truck on top of the Jersey wall. When we passed by it, we could easily see his spare tire, dive shaft, and rear axle because they were elevated (like he was on a lift). His truck was just kind of dangling on the wall, perfectly balanced. By the time we got to it, the emergency crew had gotten there and strapped it to a lift to start extricating it from its perch.
As we drove farther and further down 85 south, I thought we'd never make it to our destination for tonight. Every time I looked at the Garmin, it seemed that time kept getting longer and longer. Once we turned off the interstate, the Garmin said our hotel was 30 minutes away. After driving through a few gated communities, past a golf course, and several office parks, we finally found our place to stay. We dropped our stuff and then went to find dinner.
Mediterranean for the win!
Of course, teenagers can't stay away from their electronics for too long.
