Thursday, September 14, 2006

Day Nine - El Dorado Springs, MO to Dickson, TN

Today we said a very sad goodbye to Jenny’s kids. Joel seemed to take it in stride, but Josh was NOT happy that his personal human jungle gym had only stayed for two days. I walked by his room just in time to hear “Do they HAVE to go already???” It was touching, and I’m going to try and make an effort to make it back for at least one of the holidays this winter. We’ll see what my new work schedule is going to end up looking like.

Dad drove for the first hour while I finished catching up on sleep. Joel’s midnight adventures took a bit of a toll, and I was slow to wake up. After that, I was fine to drive, and he was the sleepy one! *grins* Driving through eastern Missouri and western Tennessee was pretty and fairly quiet. We found the cheapest gas of the trip at the Missouri/Tennessee border at 2.12 a gallon.

A couple days ago, the thought occurred to me that an old friend of mine from elementary school had moved out to Tennessee. She’d also gotten married, and I couldn’t remember her new last name. I mentioned this to dad, who remembered that her grandparents (her granddad was an old co-worker of his) had also moved to Tennessee. Whitepages.com provided us with their address and phone number, and we called them up yesterday. Turns out they live about 45 minutes west of Nashville, and were surprised and delighted to hear from us. They insisted that we should stay with them, rather than getting a hotel in Nashville (our original plan). We adjusted accordingly, and had a delightful pot roast dinner and spent a couple hours catching up on one another’s lives and the activities of mutual friends we’d each lost track of. I was able to call my friend, living about 45 miles west of her grandparents, and we talked for a couple hours. Sadly, her work schedule and my night navigation abilities didn’t let us see one another in person – but we’re going to be close enough now that we can meet somewhere in the middle for something or other – maybe hitting an amusement park in Atlanta or something…


I seem to be making excellent friends with the pets of the folks I visit, no matter where I go! Here Princess (left) and Katie (right) quickly discovered I was a softie for dogs. Katie in particular took full advantage of the marshmallow effect in both Dad and I.



Tomorrow includes the rest of Tennessee and a bit of Georgia (just above Atlanta)

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