Holy Smokes!!! Day One

Ahhhhhh yes!....finally!.....a vacation!!! Our first vacay together since our honeymoon in Hawaii last year in June. The plan was to camp out in the Smoky Mountains the first 3 nights then hotel it the next 2 nights. After my long exhausting first day of school, we decided to head out Tuesday morning...earlier the better. We woke up at 6AM, finished packing and headed out but not before stopping at the gas station for gas and coffee. By the time we were actually on the road, it was about 7:45...according to Google maps, we should get to our campsite 13 hours later.

Joshua filling the trunk with golf bags, tent,
sleeping bags, pillows, suitcase and food

Bright and early and smiling

We ended up stopping in Bloomington-Normal, Il to visit a Marriott Hotel where Joshua helped out a few times. I met some of the people he worked with. But we couldn't stay long so off we went, continuing our drive.

Everything went smoothly, we drove through Bloomington-Normal to avoid the rush hour in Chicago. There was construction on the highways so we had to slow down a bit but never got stuck in a bad traffic jam like it did to the other side. And then we hit Louisville, KY. We were on one highway about to get onto a different highway when Joshua noticed a news helicopter flying above, circling...weird. Then we realized why. The highway we needed to get on was closed...crap.

We went the only way we could and got stuck in Louisville's rush hour. The other was even worse and I thought, crap that's the way we need to go too. We tried to get off at the first exit but cars were backed up trying to get off. Then we went to the next exit and same thing. Finally at the third exit, we had a chance to get off and now we're in Louisville's downtown. We now are roaming through the downtown trying to find the entryway back on the highway but every time we saw one it was way backed up and we remembered how packed the highway was earlier. So we continued east on the Louisville roads going through the downtown then some shady areas and finally we saw a highway...whether or not it was the right one was up for debate. We left it up to our GPS to get us back on track.

One hour delay later, we were back on track. We made it to our campsite around 11 PM EDT. Not bad for a pit stop and an hour delay. We quietly grabbed our camping gear and went to the tent area. We had to set our tent on a bed of rocks, the designated tent area...seriously??? And we forgot our flashlights??? Luckily, as we were leaving, I had in my hand a spare tire inflator that had a flashlight and Joshua told me to bring it just in case when I wanted to leave it in our apartment. Even with that one flashlight, it was pitch dark out. We couldn't even see the stars as were we surrounded by trees.

Setting up tent was quite interesting. We hadn't camped out in two years and it was dark. We were in the process of putting the tent together when I felt some wet drops on my arms. Oh no! We hurriedly finished pitching our tent and of course it never rained. The tent ended up backwards...we wanted the door to face our car and not the woods. Oh well, we'll just fix it the next day. Time for sleep.