There and Back Again: A Sauve Adventure Part 1

Once upon a time, a little over a week ago, our family: Father (head driver), Mother (encourager, and motivator), Charity (navigator), Faith (best bad weather driver), Josiah (trouble shooter and back up driver) and myself (backseat kitchen crew), began on a journey. 

* Our destination - Corpus Christi Texas. 

* The reason - to visit John, his wife Mandi, and their puppy Hercules, and to celebrate John's birthday.
* Our ETD was 6:00am Tuesday morning (and we almost hit it! 6:07). 

* Planned layover in Arkansas Tuesday night at a relative's house. 

* ETA 9ish Wednesday night. 

Below is the story of our travels, as directly and briefly recorded during the trip. 

Day 1: Left at 6:07! Stopped at fire station to tighten luggage carrier straps cause it was buzzing awfully. :  {I must insert, that this was NOT just a little minor noise. No, this was a nearly deafening, bone grinding, head throbbing noise. Not the most pleasant companion to our early trip.} 

Stopped again at a store before freeway to tighten again. : Made it on freeway by 6:25am. Still buzzes every once and a while like a large hornet. : {A very very large hornet!}

9:30am - stopped at Indiana welcome center. : Time changed now. 11:15am new time - stopped at gas station in middle of nowhere. : Buzzing has been worse since gas station, stopped on side of freeway to try to fix... Didn't work.

{Truthfully, we weren't spending all our time just sitting there being annoyed to death by the buzzing.  We did have music, and audio dramas, and conference tapes to listen to, but it just made it that much more difficult!} 

12:30 - stopped at rest stop while we tied a rag on.. didn't help. : {This was truly depressing. I thought for SURE the rag would help. We tried plugging our ears, plugging our noses, stuffing pillows over our heads. The buzzing penetrated everything!} 

3:00ish - stopped at rest stop in Illinois, very nice spot.  Tied rag on front strap.  WORKS!!!! {Oh happy day! You see, we had thought the noise had come from the back strap... nope, we had been fiddling and "fixing" the wrong strap! We kept on looking at each other and saying "you hear that???.... Exactly, silence.. the most beautiful sound ever". We truly have never appreciated lack of sound before} 

 6:00pm stopped for gas in Arkansas and had dinner. : 9:05pm - arrived at Carrie's in the mountains. {We meant to go straight to bed, but we ended up talking for quite a while. :P We were very grateful to Bobby and Carrie for their hospitality. We actually didn't really know them much, and it was wonderful to spend some time and get to know them!}

 Day 2: Left Carrie's at 9:10am. Had lots of fun seeing their chickens, rabbit, dog and horse.

 {Despite it being a bit chilly, they all trooped out with us, to introduce us to their horse Trust, and to see their chicken coop.  It was such a delight walking around with the kids, and talking.

 Three of their chickens even laid eggs while we were there.. :D }

{Heading out}

Crossed into Texas 12:00. {It is just a little bit depressing when you arrive in the state of your destination and you still have over 8 hours to go to your journeys end}

 Stopped for gas 1:00pm and got out lunch. : 4:00pm stopped at Polk park rest stop to switch drivers. 57 degrees, SO nice! {It really was a nice park, Josiah and Faith played Tic Tac Toe, and we were able to stretch out a little.}

 Got stuck in awful Houston traffic, around 6ish. {We stayed stuck in that horrid traffic for almost an hour} : 8:20pm stopped at gas station, bought coffee to drink with cookies. :
 Called John for directions right before we saw a police car who turned his lights on and pulled us over. He said we were going 7 over the limit. {Insert: It was pitch black at this point, and Texas roads have a way of jumping from 75 to 70 to 55 in a very short space} He was nice, from Chicago. Talked to us about the weather, and told us that we should go to the beach and take a picture and send it to all our northern friends. He let us off with a warning...

9:50ish arrived at John and Mandi's!!  Hercules is SOoo cute! 

So that is the end of the first leg of our trip... but there is much much more!

~Chs