Our trip East

We intended to leave early morning, but took longer to get everything packed. Coming out of the driveway, we lost the bike rack, and so left it unceremoniously in the garage. Left around lunchtime just as all the fast food places had water shut off. Finally hit tyhe road at the hottest part of the day, in a fine temper. About thirty miles down the road the trailer was fishtailing alarmingly every time another vehicle passed too fast, and we returned home to jettison that as well. Back on the road again and the exterior was starting to fly off the front of the trailer, so detoured to Wal-Mart to buy more bungee cord. Thus wrapped and packed more tightly, we continued on, and decided to stay in hotels rather than unpack the trailer each night.

The trip went fairly uneventfully after that: the first night we stayed in a luxurious hotel (the only one available) somewhere in North Texas. We had cheaper digs thereafter. Once out of Texas, the heat let up a little and the trees began steadily getting taller. The van is very comfortable to travel in and we didn't have too much of a problem with boredom. We were still trying to get through the 5th Harry Potter book, so there was a lot of opportunity here. The kids managed to entertain themselves (with some whining) and we never had to resort to watching one of the DVDs.

By the third day we were in Virginia, almost to our destination. We stopped off at Charlottesville to visit Monticello, and stayed until early afternoon. We drove up the eastern shore and stayed in Maryland Saturday night. At this point the weather started getting warm and humid for the first time since we'd left home. On Sunday we arrived in Delaware and camped out at Cape Henlopen State Park. It was a relief to stop driving.