Day 2173. Emmy was up early and woke everybody else up. We soon got up, and I was packing while Randy and the kids were having breakfast. Once I was done, I also ate. Then the kids and I went over to our friends' house and sat down with them for a last few minutes. The kids were enjoying the dogs and showing their dance moves to our friends. I was glad that Sammy had woken up without a fever and was also dancing. He did feel worse later in the day.
After Randy had finished loading up the car, he joined us and we said our good-byes. It was 10:15 am as we drove off to start our longest drive in one day of our whole eight weeks. We had 6 hours 40 minutes driving time ahead of us. After an hour we already stopped for a bathroom break. And they were already getting hungry, so I started looking for a place to eat. We had crossed into Georgia which mean that it was suddenly an hour later and definitely time for lunch. All the fast food restaurants the kids suggested were 90 minutes away, so I started looking for a local diner and found one in the next town.
It was just after 1 pm when we parked at the "3 Squares Diner" in Donalsonville, GA. It had good reviews on Google Maps. There were not a lot of people inside. We sat down in a booth; it looked like a classic diner from the 50s. We looked at the menu and liked all the breakfast items so we ordered eggs for Tammy and two omelets for the rest of us, as well as a side of sweet potato fries which we hadn't eaten yet on this whole trip. Sammy was looking a little miserable but he ate some food, as did everyone else. There were huge portions of grits on each of our plates that Randy ate as he's grown up with it. Sammy liked it too.
After 70 minutes we paid and left the restaurant to continue on our way. We still had over 5 hours ahead of us. It was all rather small country roads where you had to turn every couple of miles so it was rather tiring for Randy. And because I had my hotspot on for the kids' tablets, the GPS was not on the dash but I had to tell Randy when and where to turn. That also kept me from sleeping. At least Sammy had two short naps on our long drive.
We had two more quick restroom breaks and arrived at our friends' house exactly at the time I had given them when we had left Florida: 8 pm sharp. I was impressed. And I was happy to see our friends again that I've known for a long time. We all went into the house, and the kids interacted with the dog. Sammy got to pet him together with our friend. Then we sat down at the table for dinner; everyone was pretty hungry. We had a good time eating then Tammy found a game that she did. Sammy wanted to go to bed, so Randy put him to bed. I got the other two ready for bed and read them a story, then they also went to bed. Sammy was still awake at that time. Randy stayed with them, then I stayed with them, then they told me to leave and Randy came back. Randy and I still got to talk with our friends for a while until they and Randy went to bed, while I turned my computer on to take care of the pictures and write my report. Now it's 1 am (midnight in our last time zone) and slowly time to go to bed.
