Down to Mobile

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Last Wednesday we picked up the van and my wife (with help from others)
loaded it while I was at work.  They left enough space for 5 passengers,
but only just.
Then, we drove to CT, picked up our passenger #4 and she had her suitcase
and her brother’s.  The only way to fit them in was to ditch our fire
bucket.  But, $4 from Home Despot did not make it something we could do
without.  So, it went out, Sue and the suit cases went in.
Next we drove across Connecticut back roads for more then an hour to get to
Devon’s place.
When we got there we was doing his best James Bond villain impression:


Apparently he can even turn little dogs into stone:


From there we made it through NJ without problem.  One thing about driving
through Northern New Jersey with a cold, you don’t notice the smells as
much.  This is not a bad thing.
At the rest area, this sign on the door got me wondering:

Are dogs only banned because they don’t wear shoes?  If a dog did wear
shoes, could they go in?  Is there a market for dog shoes so they can go
into rest areas?
These are the things I think of when I’ve had too little sleep and too many
cough drops…

Before I could ponder this too much, we went over the bridge and left NJ.


We promptly stopped.


New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia all had major construction
going on in the middle of the night.
In Maryland, we were at a dead stop for almost an hour waiting for the
construction workers to stop dancing in the road.  (OK, maybe they weren’t
dancing.  But, they were moving about in the travel lanes.  It could have
been a dance.)

By dawn we were not as far south as I had hoped we would be.


There was much debate about this being a place were a certain Disney
villain might have retired.

No one hits like Gaston, no one names towns after himself like Gaston…

It was well after dawn when we reached the peach.


Jose had brought a “Count” puppet with him.  Over the 24 hour drive, he
became obsessed with it.


He started waving it at other cars and demanding they count along with him.
The windows in the back were tinted, so we were the only ones who knew this
was going on.  Probably for the best.

In North Carolina the police were out in force.

I think we saw more speed traps in that state then in all the others
combined.

At one of the rest areas, Jose found Rooster Booster.

I blame the silliness of the count on that.

The rental van was a Kia Sedona that had been built in Georgia.  We went
past the plant where it was built.

I was worried it was going to try and return to the spawning ground, but it
just kept going.

You cross into Alabama with only 4 hours left on your trip.

As those of you who have read about other trips know, Alabama is the land
of the “BAM!” highway where cars roll over in front of you, tires explode
as you drive past them and debris fill the highway.  There was much
discussion about the name of the state in this.  If pronounced “allah bam
a” we wondered if it was really a prayer for the baming…

It was nice, sunny and warm.  We saw very little bam action.


It was nice, at the rest areas, to be able to stand in the sun.


Devon, Bond villain or not, seemed quite worried about the 6 mile bridge
over the swamp and rivers outside Mobile.

The wind from many, many storms has carved the trees along the highway into
a kind of free form topiary.  We were driving along picking shapes for all
of the things the trees reminded us of along the side of the road.

But, we came to the high part of the bridge that brings you into Mobile
county.


Google maps indicated that this small sand lot was where the faire was
going to be.


But, much like the border of Nicaragua, Google had it wrong and the faire
site was at the other end of the road.


They did seem to be willing to advertise for us.


The folks who had flown had rented a car and driven over from Mississippi
and were waiting for us there.


We all got out to enjoy the sun and check out the new faire site.


We were, of course, told to set up near the toilets.


These ones apparently don’t want people to linger in them.

(I’m told it was actually an add for a phone service someone had placed on
the toilet.  But, I didn’t take any chances and avoided lingering in them.)

Because my wife had driven for a good chunk of the night, and the cold
knocked me out enough that I actually slept while not in the driver’s seat,
I was able to stay up and have dinner with folks that evening.  (Usually I
pass out as soon as we get our rooms.)
Still, I was in bed by 7 and slept through to the next morning like a rock.