Journey to Florida

We made it =)  We are finally in our Florida Home.
And I'm loving it.

But let me back track and recap our journey here:

We picked the truck and dolly up on Thursday the 8th and then weighed them empty.  Packed the stuff from the storage unit into the truck.

Friday, September 9th was our departure day.  It was the day our lease was up.  We had to be out.
We had some set backs that day (people not signing Nick's paperwork for absolutely no reason, lack of muscles to help move heavy items (I'm a tiny girl and it was just us two), a dog to watch in the process of moving things down 3 flights of stairs, Nick getting sick for a few hours, POURING rain the majority of the day, etc.)  We finally had the truck completely packed, apartment cleaned, said our goodbyes to our first home, and locked the doors.
But we couldn't start our trek yet.  We had to get the car onto the tow dolly. That was a scary experience and I do not want to do it again.  After some trial and error, it was up and held tight.  Hooray!!!

Nick & his sunflower chewing

We finally left Annapolis at 1:30am.  We didn't make it too far. Even though Nick has his sunflower seeds (his go-to when he needs to stay awake), we didn't last long.  After only two hours of driving, we stopped to sleep.  It sucks but we had been going all day....woke up at 7am and had been packing all day.  We stopped in the parking lot of a giant grocery store plaza.  Yadi slept in her bed on the floorboard, I slept on the bench seat and Nick slept in the Accord.
After two hours of sleep, we hit the road again.  We only made it another 2 hours before Nick needed to stop again and sleep.  We slept for another 2-3 hours at a truck stop and then we headed on the road again for quite a few more hours.

We drove through the rest of Virginia.
I noticed they don't have billboards.  Odd.  And frustrating when you're wanting a truck stop and something to eat.  I also noticed how green it is here and I LOVE it!!!!

At this point, I realized how frustrating this truck/tow dolly is!  We can't reverse.  So anywhere we go, it needs to have a large enough parking lot to make our HUGE wide turns, and it also needs two exits/entrances.  ANNOYING!  Hence why we pretty much only pull over for gas at Pilot and Flying J's (truck stops).

Also at this point, realized we were only getting 6 miles to the gallon in our 55 gallon truck.  OUCH!  That hurts the wallet =/

But no other choice but to keep going.

You might be asking, how was Yadi doing?  Well, the car has a spell over Yadi.  She can be bat shit crazy but they moment she gets into a car, she's zonked out!  She will sleep until you turn the car off.

sleeping on her mommy

We finally got into North Carolina.  I got to experience Zaxby's for the first time.  It's a fast food chicken joint so naturally, Nick loves it.  I wasn't all that impressed.  The chicken was good but no better than anything else I've had.  Their Zaxby's sauce was good, but again, nothing to be obsessed about.  (I was a little disappointed.)

And then we got into South Carolina.  They definitely love their peaches, rugs, and fireworks. That stuff was everywhere!  And they even have a peach water tower!

Then we made it into Georgia.  Atlanta was a nightmare!

There is construction everywhere.  And driving a giant 26 foot U-Haul truck, pulling a tow dolly through the narrow lanes of construction was NOT fun!  I was super proud of Nick for doing it.  I know it was nerve racking for him but he also found it "exciting"....weirdo.

After Atlanta, we stopped again (around 11pm) and took a short nap.

Someone didn't want to nap.  Can you blame
her?  She's been sleeping for almost 22 hours.

Then we kept on trucking (haha, get it?!) and crossed into Alabama.

We came to a creepy, creepy town....Brewton.  It was about 3am and I've never been more scared.  This place looked like an old abandoned town.  It was so run down.  It looked like something straight out of Chain Saw Massacre.  It also smelled awful!  The entire town smelled like that old, musty, dusty old people basement smell.

can't count on my furious guard dog to protect us =/

Of course, this would be the point were Nick gets tired and needs to pull over.  We came to a Wal-Mart and stopped in their parking lot....it wasn't a 24 hour one (go figure) but it was lit.  Thankfully, Nick said he was going to sleep in the truck with us.  If he had said he was going to sleep in the Accord again, I would have chained him to the steering wheel and forced him to sleep in the cab with us.  There was no way he was leaving me alone to be brutally murdered.  Sounds crazy but trust me, this place was legit murder scene from a movie/  (Just as other Pensacola girls who've had to drive through there).

After about 2 hours (in which I couldn't sleep and was fully aware of every little noise), we got back on the road and got the hell out of Brewton!  (My naive husband saw nothing wrong with this place.  What the crap, Nick?!)

We arrived in Florida just as the sun was rising.  Oddly enough, this was the first sunrise Nick and I had ever seen together <3  ...how perfect that it was as we were just 20 minutes from our first real HOME.
And then we made it.  We pulled into our driveway at about 7:15am =)

Thank goodness.  Safe and sound.

Click HERE to read about Day One in Florida
Click HERE to read about Our New Florida Home