Sunday, June 27, 2010

We made it to Virginia!

If anyone is wondering,...it is a very long drive from Wenham, MA to Norfolk, VA via Washington DC. We left Saturday morning on time for us...which is an hour late of ideal. By 7am we were packed into the car (quite literally *packed* in the car) and heading south. We made it through NY traffic before lunch and our first stop to stretch our legs was at the Vince Lombardi rest stop off the New Jersey turnpike. It's just a rest stop...nothin' fancy. Anyway. After a little recharge, and a few laughs we got back on the road and made it to Washington DC by 5pm and met Stephanie for a great, leisurely dinner followed by frozen yogurt. Delicious! She gave us the quick driving tour of "the mall" and we saw in less than an hour: the white house, the capital, the supreme court, memorials to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, the WW2 memorial and many of the Smithsonian museums. How amazing! Sometime after 7pm we headed into Virginia for the final push. We arrived in Norfolk around 11pm and settled in for the night. Sleep came around 12:30 - 1am.
The good and the hard: The car was FULL so each stop we played musical chairs to change things up. The back seats watched Miss Congeniality and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We listened to country music at times and listened to Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix chapters 1-3. I only had to pull the mom, "Don't make me stop the car" line once. I remember noticing the purple flowers along Route 15 in Connecticut and how all of highway 95 is lined by trees so MA looks pretty much the same as VA except if you look closely...the trees are different. The moon rising over the trees in VA last night was beautiful. And at the end of a long trip, it is nice to be welcomed to smiles and the warm huge of friends that you wish you could see more often. I experienced laughing so hard i was crying (not recommended while driving!) as well as watching by daughter be so exhausted she couldn't bring herself to leave the car last night when we finally arrived. I think I will learn a lot about myself and my kids during this trip.
I'll be back tomorrow. Today, we slept in, and now have a beach-side wedding to look forward to. We'll say good-bye to Stefan tonight as he flies back to Boston, and we'll be sleeping in Apex, NC if all goes according to plan.

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