Tim Darby Photography

Road Trip - Day 1:

The roadtrip has begun!

The past few days have been a bit hectic. Greg arrived in Jax from Portland on Sunday evening and then I was preparing for my last final which was on Wednesday night. After some celebration and dinner it was time to finally pack for the trip. Looking back on it I wish I would have started packing a bit earlier, but I had things planned out in my head and everything went smoothly but it just took a little longer than I wanted. All of a sudden it was 3 a.m. and I was still preparing for the trip. 3 hours later the alarm was going off and an hour after that we were finally on the road! The first day was pretty uneventful and other than a few traffic holdups due to construction the drive was pretty fast and we made good time. We stopped at the Cumberland Hooters in Atlanta to meet up with some of the BP crew and had a great time and they bought us lunch to send us off on our journey! What a great group we have!



I must say driving the manual transmission in downtown Atlanta traffic was a bit hairy at tiems but mercifully we survived. After Atlanta we headed west through Birmingham, AL, then through Mississippi where we caught some slight rain but not nearly as much as we had anticipated and then 700+ miles later hit Memphis. After checking into the hotel - which was a first for Greg and I since neither of us have ever checked into a hotel that had 2 inch thick bulletproof glass as opposed to a front desk. Not a very comforting feeling, but with a liquor store and club less than 20 feet away how on earth could we go wrong! (turns out we read some trip adviser reviews on a Scottish Inn - also in Memphis - but on the other side of town) I will post more about the hotel if we survive the night. After checking in and bringing our valuables in from the car we planned the evening. We ended up heading down to where else, Beale Street where we had some great BBQ at Rum Boogie (one of my parent's favorite haunts) and took in some tunes before heading back to the hotel.



The other photos of the day are here

Ok, it is finally time to lay down and get some rest. When we got back to the hotel we realized our window wouldn't lock so Greg used a wire hanger to attempt to create a lock of our own which in an emergency situation would have done nothing more than wake us up with a little noise to alert us of our impending deaths. Fortunately I had a plan b since Greg has the bed closest to the window so if the clanging of the wire hanger doesn't alert me of my impending death, hopefully Greg's screaming will! Here's hoping! :-) Time for bed - not sure if I could pull off the 2nd leg on only 3 hours of sleep again. Tomorrow we head from Memphis to Amarillo TX. More updates to follow!