The flight home

No, I don't mean we gave up and took a plane. We fled the south. After our stay at the Windam, we got up and out at around 11AM and began the final trek through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and, finally, Maryland.

Nothing much happened until we had a minor miscommunication about South Carolina. We agreed to take a scenic route to break up the highway driving, but it turns out the scenic route Ang pointed out did not encompass the entire northern part of the state through the Cherokee Foothills like the one I took us to. Oops.

After all the mountains, and canyons, and sierra nevadas, and lakes and whatnot, it was boring as hell. Church, church, dollar general, church, dollar tree, church, church, SCENERY! I SEE SCENERY!

[scenery] SCENERY IS SCENIC!!

At some point, I started singing. And singing. About dirt and worms, I think. Then I lost volume control and started screaming every part of my conversation. I was tired, and I knew it was going to be a 6AM arrival, and I think hysterics had set in.

There was really nothing entertaining about the drive, and we even took one pull off to Devil's Fork, which sounded interesting, but was really just a boat ramp and we both had to poop. And we paid $4 to get into the boat ramp section. And there was nowhere to poop. I think Ang had some poop tirade, but I forget it now, so maybe she'll update with it later. I took a picture of the boat ramp as we turned around.

[boat ramp] This picture cost us $4.

As we were leaving the boat ramp park, we saw a visitor center. Which meant a bathroom! You had to have a day pass to use the visitor center, which was fortunate, because it meant that for $4 we got a picture AND pooped. It's almost a deal.

Ang picked a stall, and I got in mine, and Ang's toiled flushed prematurely. And didn't stop. It just flushed and flushed and flushed endlessly as I laughed and people outside the stall snickered. She told me to shut up, and I had no idea how hard it was to poop when the toilet was splashing and distracting her. Abruptly, it stopped flushing. She ran out of the stall and informed me that we had to flee, because it had only stopped because she had finally pooped in it. We spent a lot of this trip fleeing.

Actually, now that I think about it, that might have been Ang's poop tirade. Probably not, because I doubt she wants the public to know about that story. On second thought, I don't think we care about such indecencies at this point. 

About halfway through the "scenic" drive, we looked at the map after Ang started asking how to get back to the highway. I told her there was basically no turning back, as we were only halfway, and she was all, "what the fuck is this? I meant THIS route *small gesture on map*, not THIS ROUTE! *large gesture on the map*"

I started driving after that. In the sunset. AGAIN. I swear to god, I got sunset driving and therefore night driving EVERY TIME, from day 1. Every time I bitched about how our driving schedule had turned out, she would point out that I was too busy screaming about MAH BLANKETS in the morning to drive, so she did it. It was a good point. I am not a morning person, and probably would have killed us trying to swerve over 3 lanes, a grassy median, and 3 more lanes to get to a Chevron for my precious instant sugary cappuccino.

We eventually made it back to the highway, and into North Carolina. Behold, the most interesting thing on the entire drive:

[pumpkin mobile]

The rain started somewhere around Durham, North Carolina. I was trucking along in the middle lane, and zoomed past a cop (not his car, the cop himself) helping out a wrecked vehicle in the fast lane, nearly clipping him. It was then that we decided that we needed caffeine, and a plan.

We pulled into a gas station, and looked at the weather map. Ang started whimpering, so I took a look.

Remember that time I yelled that Isaac was a pussy, way back in Louisiana? Yeah, so did Isaac, and he was NOT HAPPY. We were looking at a large swath of yellow and red colored storms directly in our path, marching in the same direction we were.

We sat there a while and I ate my last meal (chili cheesy tots), and thought about how we were probably going to die. We were both tired, the tires were probably bald at this point, and it was dark with hurricane remnants shaking their fist at us. There was no option to just sit and wait it out, because we both had work and if we waited, we would just be stuck in an even larger storm that was coming up behind us.

We said fuck it, took caffeine pills, and got back on the highway. I was going 55 in a 65, and we shook our head at everyone that zoomed past us, telling them that they had no idea what they were about to drive into.

I kept waiting for it to get bad, and the rain increase a little bit, but it was still pretty mellow.

Then, we were suddenly in Virginia, which meant we had made it above the storm.

"Can I say it yet?"
"NO. Don't you dare say it."
"How about now?"
"You bitch, I still have to drive home after Maryland. Don't you DARE."
"Fiiiine."

I muttered about Isaac being a pussy low enough that she couldn't hear me.

After that, we had to pee, so Angie talked about how her bladder was going to burst like that woman from hold your wee for a Wii. I told her I didn't think it was bladder bursting that killed her, so she Wikipedia'd it, and found out it was water intoxication. Then she went to a link with water intoxication stories. Then she went to a link with a list of unusual deaths.

The final 4 hours of the trip was spent with me trying to stay awake, while Ang read stories about horrific and/or weird and/or toilet-related deaths.

For the record, our favorite was about a man who jumped from a 10-story building, and got shot passing by the 9th story window. What he didn't know was that the 8th story had a net, so he wouldn't have died. He was shot by his father. He was trying to commit suicide because his mother had cut him off financially, and he had placed a bullet in a gun that his father used to threaten his mother with all the time but always had blanks in it. He had hoped that the father would shoot the mother and kill her, thinking it still had blanks. When that didn't happen, he jumped from the building. The case was ruled suicide because he had placed the bullet in the gun to begin with.

Yeah, we had to read that a few times to figure it out, too.

Random quote:

Ang: I'm bored. Do we have any snacks?
Me: Really? Fine. ::rustles through snack bag:: um, there's...expired tiramisu cakes, some fritos, a bag of suspiciously perfect sixlets (wtf?), a bag of bugles that might be from back in California, some melted trail mix, and a kippered beef jerky stick from Oregon.

Ang: I want the beef jerky.

Me: How about I distract you with a sixlet, and then we can take an exit and get snacks.

Ang: Ok.
*eats sixlet*
I'm still bored.

Me: This is why I'm the better driver and you're the better passenger. I get bored here, you get bored there.

Ang: Really? Do you remember what happened the last time you got bored?

The beef stick was rancid, by the way.