Road Trip 2010: Day 1 of 17 (Atlanta to Savannah)

The boys showing off the Scrabble art pieces that Aunt Laine made for them. I don't know why they are compelled to adorn themselves with necklaces, but they are.

Each night Derek would take over with his electronics to insure that they were charged for the following day

Adam is exhausted

Friday May 28, 2010

We stayed up late and did a lot of packing the night before. The kids went to school with Helen and helped her pack up. She didn't finish and resigned herself to fact that she'll have to return to school to do some work over the summer. She was worried about leaving a little early. I said, "You've been working and grading papers every weekend - leave when you want." She always feels guilty about leaving early only to find out when she goes to the parking lot that most people have already left.

We all ended up getting home around 3 pm and were on the road a little before 5. We hit Krystal on the way out of town. We ran into some pockets of traffic on the way down to Savannah, but it really wasn't too bad considering it was the Memorial Day weekend. Maybe it was the fact that we were on vacation so things like traffic didn't bother us.

We talked about the trip and gave the kids a general overview of the things we would be doing. We also made them write in their journal about the things they were looking forward to about the trip.

Before the trip I bumped up our Netflix account to 8 movies at time so we would have some movies to watch on our trip. I also bought a AAA membership and registered for a couple of the hotel rewards programs. In the past we didn't favor any particular hotel chain, but usually preferred moderate chains like La Quinta, Drury Inn, and Hampton Inn. We don't usually make any reservations beforehand since we never know where we'll end up. That almost cost us this year as the hotels in Savannah were pretty full for Memorial Day. We wondered why we had not had any problems getting a room over Memorial Day weekend on the other road trips and then realized we had stayed with my sister Katie in 2008 and at Disney World in 2009, so we had not attempted to wing it before on a Memorial Day weekend.

We got into Savannah around 10 pm and stayed at a Hampton Inn just outside the city. We went to bed tired, but looking forward to exploring the city in the morning.