Road Trip: 14.5 hours in a car

For the fifth year in a row, we are on our way to Austin City Limits. Other than our trip to Texas on our Out West Trip this past May, we haven’t done the trip in a single day for years now. I like to break the trip into two days. We can leave after the girls’ “activities” and drive for six or seven hours before collapsing. I can get up the next morning and work for four hours in a hotel room. This system, overall works quite well for us.

However, being short on time and (potentially) short on money (more to come on that perhaps), we decided to make the trip out on one single day. The girls are road warriors. I wish I had kept some sort of log of all the miles we’ve logged in the car — our own version of a frequent flier program.

But I pushed them hard yesterday. We got in the car at 5am. A full tank of gas and a cooler of healthy food. 920 miles ahead of us.

And it was the best ever trip. We got through Birmingham before rush hour. We did not have any slow downs, other than a few school zones in East Texas. And, the biggest accomplishment? We managed it with only TWO stops, when we needed gas. No extra stops, no slow downs.

So, how did the girls manage? They did some homeschooling, they read books. They listened to Mindy (Don’t know Mindy? you should.) And Chloe spent an ENTIRE hour counting how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Oh, yes, she did. 1690 licks. So now you know.

tootsie pops - 14 sep 2011