Across the Country - Day 6

Joliet, IL - Clarksville, TN
Mileage - 485
Miles Driven - 2,627


View Larger Map

Today we had to get up early and meet Uncle Dave near Midway airport. Like all other days, we got off to a slow start. Susan and Gina repacked the U-haul to make room for all the stuff in the back seat of the Honda. Then we went to the Post Office to mail our cooler home, but it cost as much to mail it as to just buy a new one, so we left it with Gina.

Poor Dave was up and ready by 5:00AM, and we didn't pull up to his hotel until about 10:00AM. Having Dave along was Aunt Cathy's idea, and we were all in favor. It would be nice having another driver along; especially for the last long push into Florida.

Dave brought a long a cool little electronic gadget - a Magellan GPS. We quickly named her 'Maggie' due to her voiced route instructions. Dave programmed in Chuck and Melissa's address in Tennessee and Maggie went to work finding the fastest route. Dave had a different route in mind to get out of Chicagoland, and Maggie was not pleased. Every time we 'missed' a turn, her screen would go blank and she'd say, "Calculating route" and come up with something bizarre like, "Make your next legal U-turn and ...". Somehow it is very entertaining disobeying the computer. :-)

Once on the interstates, Maggie was finally happy and stopped complaining. We each drove a few hours, then switched while getting gas or food.

Illinois took a very long time to drive through. At this point I decided that if I ever do a long road trip again, I want to cross all the states along their shorter dimension.

Finally we crossed into Tennessee and Maggie led us directly to Chuck's driveway; although we did have to enter a bogus address, since his address was 'invalid'. Chuck and Melissa welcomed us in and fed us dinner. Andrew played with the boys for awhile, while Dave, Chuck, and I watched the vice-presidential debate on a tiny 9 inch TV. Then we all called it a day and went to bed.

Continue...