On the road we started telling Warren about Idiocracy, one of my favorite movies. Then Sandra had a great idea… Let’s watch it!
I had it on my iPod (and on my iPhone in case of emergency) so we plugged the iPod into the car radio and hit play. I know this movie very well so listening for me was as good as watching. Warren however got the full effect of what could be in store for the world and a good laugh along with it. There’s nothing that helps pass the time of a long drive quite like some good humor.
When it was my turn to drive I started watching the ETA on the GPS. For some reason, even though we were speeding a little the arrival time kept getting later. Then I noticed that we had an hour and a half until we arrived at what Tom Tom predicted would be 10:30 pm and looking at the clock it was 10:00 pm already, something was off. An hour and a half drive in thirty minutes? That’s when we realized we had adjusted the clock to Eastern Time but not the GPS, problem solved except we were now arriving at 11:30 pm!
How did this happen? When we went back for the dog bowls it was 2:30 pm, from there it is a 5 hour drive so 7:30 ish and about a half hour to get the bowls and traffic so we had estimated 8:00 – 8:30 pm. Add in the time change and we should have arrived at 9:00 or 9:30 pm. We stopped three times at rest areas but 20 minutes per stop was overestimating if you ask me and that’s only an hour. Was it possible that getting out of Chicago added another hour to our trip? I felt like we were going backwards, but we kept on trucking.
At one point we thought about getting a hotel and setting up the tent in the morning since we were staying two nights in this campground. We called a few places, #1 – no dogs over 25 lbs. (They only like the yippie ones) #2 – dogs only in smoking rooms and those were booked up. (who smokes anymore anyway?) #3 – well we decided to save #3 as a backup incase the park was locked up when we arrived. No sense in closing all of our options.
When we pulled in and found the gate open, we were OK. Our site was already reserved and we knew what number we were. We fired up the lantern and set up the tent with no problems. Then we all climbed in and went to bed… that’s when the lightning started in the distance. Lets hope the rain doesn’t come back.