Day 1

Day 1, March 15, 2008: Happy birthday, Mom! We rented a minivan to travel in because the Durango gets such poor gas mileage. Friday night, Chuck and I checked all of the kids' bags and staged everything to go into the van. We set the alarm for 4:00 a.m. to set off.

At 4:15 the kids all came downstairs already dressed, ready to go! WOO HOO! They were great! They even made their beds before we left....without being asked to do it! We finally hit the road around 5:00 A.M. We tried to pack lightly, but we still had a lot in the van.

Chuck drove through fog...thick fog...pea soup-thick fog...from Cleveland to Columbus. We stopped at Micky D's for breakfast. Makenna had pancakes there for the first time! You'll have to read her posts to read her review of them. From Columbus I drove to Tennesee in clear skies.

We stopped and Chuck took over. It began to rain...really hard. In Nashville it rained so much that the low areas of the roads were flooded and covered the windshield when we drove through them. Very scary driving.

Eventually, the weather cleared and I drove from the Alabama state line to the first stop in Langston, Alabama with a warm breeze and sunny skies. Sixty-five degrees.

The kids were great travelers. They read, played games with each other and with us, took naps, argued just a little, and watch the landscape go by as we drove.

We got to Little Mountain Marina Camping Resort on Lake Guntersville around 7:30 p.m. Our cabin was quaint and clean!

We ate pizza for dinner, watched some old Looney Tunes on a DVD we brought, and were ready to sleep. Then we realized that "Renters must provide bed linens" included pillows and blankets, too! The kids had their blankets and travel pillows, but we didn't. Luckily, the camp store had one blanket left: a queen-sized down comforter for only $35! We slept soundly.