Keep on trucking

So many or at least some of you may have noticed we were quite vague in our location and which direction we were heading in the last post and I will get to that shortly but first let me get you all back up to speed. From Tims Ford we worked our way through some more back country Tennessee as the bleeding sat-nav. went hay-wire resulting in it getting thrown to the backseat and a little common sense was applied and before we knew it we were on the slip road to the I-24 headed south east towards Atlanta Georgia before picking up the I-75. Atlanta was our first city we visited on this trip by a technicality, so it was crazy to think how far and how much we’ve achieved in the last 3 weeks. We chose not to stay too long in Atlanta as on our return flight we have a 13 hour layover. As we were making good progress I decided to pull off into a mall to do a quick shop and then make lunch in the car park. Time disappeared quickly made worse by the crossing into our final time-zone as we had entered Georgia.  This meant we were heading out of Atlanta during rush hour, not something I would recommend. We skilfully avoided the maniacs around us as they locked brakes and seemingly tried to run each other off the road. We witnessed many miraculous near misses and people using grass verges to cut across to their exit roads. It was most entertaining if not a little bit frightening. But all that matters is we got through unscathed and soon the traffic disappeared and we got the colossus back up to speed and powered on till we were halfway to Savannah in a little town called Dublin. We stayed in a rest stop again just on the outskirts of the town right alongside the Interstate which was only half open as the slow lane was nothing more than a hole in the ground. To say I didn’t sleep well was an understatement, what with the traffic and Chris stretching out across and taking up all the space. In the end I had to swap ends just to try and get to sleep only issue now was the street lights shone directly into my eyes through the windows. Eventually though I did manage to nod off for a while and still got up ahead of the sleeping princess. I have never known a man who requires quite so much sleep! And I thought I slept a lot.

We took our time getting rolling again as we didn’t have far to go and still had all day to get there. It was weird how we both had become so accustomed to sitting in public places and eating breakfast as people rushed around us. The odd weird look would be shot our way but we really couldn’t care. After an hour or 2 of just watching the world go by we decided to make the short Journey into the outskirts of Savannah and hopefully find a reasonably priced motel, so the useless sat-nav. was brought back into service and for the first time in a while it took us to the right place and to a place that rates were not too bad so we settled in and took a day to sort out the car. Firstly we sorted out the radio/cd system with an auxillary input as we’d run out of Country stations. Then a few tweaks here and there to fix the odd rattle. After that we were truly lazy and ordered in some pizza and kicked back and watched the old Top Gear episode that had inspired the journey we are on. It was really nice to kick back for a change and forget where we were and just feel like we were at home for a little while. I say feel like we were home, it was around 25-30 degrees inside and we hadn’t yet found the air conditioning unit underneath the window. After we’d had our fill and the episode was over we worked on the last blog post, reorganised our kit, planned our trip into the heart of Savannah and the big surprise that was now only just around the corner, with that done we started to watch The Life of Pi and then it was time for bed. As I drew the curtains I then discovered the illusive air conditioning unit and finally brought the room to a reasonable temperature, with a little extra noise. Fortunately we were both tired enough to quickly block out the sound and drift off to sleep within a few minutes.

We woke up late for a change and loaded the yank tank again and made our way into down town Savannah. It was really quiet especially for a Sunday. Most weekends places of interest such as Savannah are packed, but I guess we just got lucky. We started by heading down to the river front walking past buildings that would not have been out of place in Britain. Old red brick houses with Victorian style architraves and others were brightly coloured shiplap covered buildings. The streets also were no longer perfectly in blocks as the old town had expanded roads cut off in random places and small parks acted as roundabouts among the residential areas. All this added up to make it an enjoyable and relaxing walk. After a few hours of just walking in every direction we decided we’d seen it all and the quest for a Georgia license plate began. We wandered around the main high street with no luck so headed back to the river front and the tourist shops. I quickly found one and a southern flag (In case it gets rough in Alabama) and we headed out. We were to make Florida before sundown before making our surprise overnight run. All that including a video is to follow.

Ben