Trip Home

Tuesday—
I was up at 8:00, getting things packed, dishes washed, etc. Meg was up shortly thereafter. Checkout time at the cabin was 11:00. We pushed it to the limit. I told Robin that her snails and slugs and bugs could NOT come home to Plainfield. “Please? Pleeeeasssee???” Meg put her foot down. No bugs! Robin wasn’t very happy about that. We hit the road a few minutes after 11:00 AM.
I didn’t give Ryan breakfast. Figured he wouldn’t be hungry. We weren’t even to Pigeon Forge when he announced that he was hungry and wanted breakfast. McDonald’s doesn’t serve breakfast at that hour, so he had chicken nuggets and French fries…and chocolate milk. We ALL had junk food. A little while later at a pottie stop, he got a flavored drink and a bag of marshmallow “peanuts”. Still no sign of an upset stomach. As we approached Lexington, KY, we stopped at McDonald’s again…this time for WiFi. Ryan ordered a cheeseburger…but didn’t eat it. He DID drink the chocolate milkshake that he ordered. I got Apple Dippers for him, which he ate later in the car, saying “This will be my nutrition for the day.”
The Lexington experience was an interesting side trip. Meg has long known that her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather James Bryan had helped to settle that area in the late 1700s. In fact, there had been a place called Bryan Station (fort)…and Bryan Station Road still exists. She knew there was an historical marker there. I got to looking at the map and saw that we would be driving right over Bryan Station Road on Interstate 75. When we stopped at a McDonald’s for wireless Internet a few miles out of Lexington, it was to do a little research on how to get to the historical marker.
The “big story” was that Bryan Station was out of water. The spring was outside the fort, but 500 Native-Americans were observed hiding in the area, waiting to attack. In a complicated strategy, the men of the station managed to convince the women that they should go get water, in order to keep things looking normal, etc. They did. The attack never happened because the fort was adequately supplied and the Indians were thwarted. According to the Internet, the DAR had built a monument to the brave women around the spring, but that the spring is on private property and is not open to the public. L
We followed the Google Earth map on the computer. Only had to backtrack once…but suddenly, there was the historical marker. We parked in someone’s gated driveway (we apparently were in big-time racehorse farm territory) and walked to the marker for pictures. When Meg and I read that the monument around the spring was on private property, we were thinking, like, a farm or pasture, and that we weren’t afraid to knock on a door to ask if we could take pictures. We had no idea we would be in the ritzy area! Needless to say, we got back in the car, happy with what we had. It was only a short trek back to the interstate. It didn’t cost us much time. It would have been stupid to pass it by just because we were on the way home. I’m glad we stopped.

Our last pottie stop of the day was also a supper stop. Subway. Meg discovered a container of bugs stowed away in the car. When she confronted Robin about it, Robin said, “How did those get there?” Hmmmm….
We arrived in Plainfield, IN, a little after 8:00 PM. Back to civilization. Back to home. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like it! We did things we’d never done before (and probably will never do again). Saw places that were awesome. Enjoyed every moment as it came. The children are quite patient in waiting for the adults to decide what we are doing. (They were happiest in the hot tub and scouting out snails. Go figure!) Meg goes to work tomorrow. I intent to sleep as much as I can!