Today we left our vacation house quite early because our goal was to drive all the way home in one day. We did plan to drive through St. Louis just in case we wanted to stop, but we hoped not to. I drove first so Jason could sleep to make sure he would not be too tired to drive safely. I don't like to drive at night and I am a morning person, plus I can't sleep in cars even when completely exhausted, so there is no way I could drive at the end if Jason got tired. So we decided it would be best for me to drive first even though it may or may not actually be necessary.
We drove up to Birmingham and planned for Jason to start driving after that. Since we were in the South, we decided to stop at Whataburger. We only ever eat here on vacation because the closest one to us is in Oklahoma, but we
love the burgers. It's probably good there aren't any close to us because they taste really delicious and I am guessing they are quite caloric, even for burgers. I refuse to look up the nutritional information, but I think it's good it's only a few times a year that we enjoy these. It's definitely a treat for me. I love the Monterey Melt.
We decided to take a new route this time. On the way down, we come through Arkansas and that's the fastest way and a drive we enjoy except for the Mississippi part, but there is no place to stop around 4 hours out from our home, which is what we need on the way home. Last year we took the interstates home, but we don't love interstate driving if there is a US highway option available that is a similar driving time. We like seeing things we haven't seen before and seeing what a place is like and that's hard to do on the interstate. So this time, we drove state and US highways. Shortly after Birmingham, we drove northwest through Alabama, into Mississippi (and really this part of Mississippi seemed a little better than the part along the interstate on the other route), then through Tennessee, and then up into southern Missouri. We then took I-55 north to St. Louis and then drove I-70 home. This took 20 minutes or so longer than interstates, but it was well worth it to us and we loved this route and will be taking it home in the future for sure.
We made great time. I am not sure we could do better with kids. We stopped again in Missouri at McDonald's for dinner. It was slightly depressing because we had like another seven hours to go after entering Missouri, which seems impossible because it's only one little state away. It's like driving to Houston and getting to Dallas after being in the car forever and realizing you have another four hours. It just seems impossible, yet somehow that's how it is. Our kids do great in the car even when we ask a lot of them, as we did today. We rolled into our driveway around 12:30, which was a long and tiring day, but reasonable and we find it totally worth it to be home all day tomorrow.
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