Much to my joy, this ballpark had the baseball helmet ice cream cups. Since I'd just eaten a drumstick, I asked the man if I could just buy the cups. He said yes, which made me very happy!
Friday morning, we started out on our LONG drive day. It wasn't supposed be longer than Thursday, but we got to sit in some traffic a couple of places. Oh well, part of the road trip fun! :) When we arrived in Georgia, we stopped at the welcome center to pick up our Georgia state map. Little did we know it was Georgia On My Mind Day. This means that vendors from hotels and attractions were set up at all the welcome centers giving away free stuff. (If you're a nurse, you understand my utter excitement when I saw all the free pens!!!!) We spent more time than we'd planned looking around there, but it was fun and nice to walk around a little . . . you know, break up the monotony of driving halfway across the country.
After spending a few hours enjoying the roads of Georgia, we passed the South Carolina State Line. South Carolina wasn't having any special event, so we just picked up our map and went on our way. Starting just east of Birmingham that morning, we started noticing that the number of Cracker Barrel restaurants were increasing exponentially. By the time we hit South Carolina that afternoon, we were seeing them about every 10-15 miles!! Unbelievable!!!!
Moral of the story: If you're ever in need of several Cracker Barrel restaurants in a small area, go drive on I-20 east of Birmingham and I-85 north of Atlanta!
Finally, later that afternoon, we made it to North Carolina. Durham was our "final destination" for Friday in the hopes that we'd get to watch the Durham Bulls play that evening. Well, due to the aforementioned traffic delays, we didn't hit Durham until too late to watch the game. Instead, we walked around Target for a little while, got some supper, and went back to the hotel to rest up for the final day of travel on Saturday.
It only took a couple of hours to get to the Virginia state line after leaving Durham Saturday morning.
Of course, we stopped at the welcome center to get our state map, and then we continued north to complete our journey. Inside the center, they had the cutest benches with the state of Virginia on the back, so I snapped a quick picture. :)
It was only about an hour, maybe an hour & a half, to reach Richmond, VA, the place where we joined the other travelers on the ever-dreaded I-95!! (hearing panicked screams in the background . . .) MUCH to my surprise (and GREAT JOY), there wasn't much traffic along the road. In reality, for that area, I wouldn't even consider it a little trafficky - just normal driving. What a blessing!! When I took this route (going in the opposite direction) last year leaving the DC area, the ~90 miles from DC to Richmond took me around 4 hours!! So, needless to say, this was the part of the trip I dreaded most. Once again, God took care of the details and got us to the apartment complex, checked in, and inside my apartment just in time before the complete deluge of rain that started about 5 minutes after we closed the door to my apartment! (I'm not kidding . . . the creek behind my apartment was dry one minute and then rushing with about a foot deep of water the next!!) It was a quick storm, though, so it didn't really delay us in moving my stuff into the apartment.
Later last night, we did some exploring to find where my grocery store, Target (yes, knowing where my closest Target is located constitutes a necessity) :), and hospital were located. This morning, we got to go back to my church. I absolutely fell in love with this church when I lived up here during my first 2 contracts back in 2006. I was able to get involved there again last summer while I was living in the area for a few months, and I'm looking forward to jumping back in with both feet this time! :D
After church, we went to lunch, and then did a little more exploring of the area. We weren't looking for anything in particular today, just seeing what's around here. Then, I had to drop my dad off at the airport so he could get back to Texas and work this week. So, I've been sitting out on my patio (the place I get the best signal on my phone & computer oddly enough) enjoying the weather and the squirrels playing most of the evening. I can't get over how nice and cool the weather is here!!
I have a few more things to unpack and clean up in my apartment, and then I'll take some pictures of it and the view out my back patio to post. It's an amazing area! I hope you had a terrific weekend and that this will be a great week for you! Please keep me in your prayers as I learn a new hosptial/NICU . . . always a challenge! Thank you! :~)
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