there are miles and miles of gulfcoast states

You know that norman rockwell picture where they are going on vacation and on the way over there they are all chipper and happy and on the way back they look deflated and glum? That's us right now. 12 hours and 8 stops later, we are home. It broke down like this and should all be read to the tune of Jenny Dreamed of a Train by John Denver since that is Annabelle's favorite song and what we listened to for at least 6 of the 12 hours:

stop 1: gas in Florida
stop 2: Whataburger in Florida
stop 3: Crackerbarrel in Gulfport where we met some of my friends who were heading where we were coming from for lunch. (this took 2 hours due to bad service, gossiping about my crazy old job and browsing at the cracker barrel store)
stop 4: somewhere in LA to switch drivers. H was falling asleep so we took the first exit we could find. I immediately had a sense of dread, like we were going to get lost in some strange wilderness, live on a pontoon boat and eat crawdads for the rest of our lives and only be sighted once in a while like the ivory billed woodpecker, so this was a quick stop.
stop 5: gas in somewhere in LA large enough to have a starbucks
stop 6: starbucks across the street
stop 7: in LA at a place called Diesels to pee for Annabelle and to feed and change Tallulah. They had alligator heads here that Annabelle was fascinated by, but would not touch and a cookbook called "who's your mama, are you catholic and can you make a roux," which I regret not buying.
stop 8: in Vinton to pee for Annabelle again. Never, under any circumstances, stop at the Chevron in Vinton to pee. I'd rather pee in the Memorial Park port-o-john in the middle of August than at the Chevron in Vinton.

When we crossed the Texas border we were greeted by a sign that said "drive friendly, it's the Texas way" and then another informing us that El Paso was 857 miles away. Then Hyphen's allergies kicked in and he started to sneeze. Despite the sneeze attack, we still played all the Texas songs on our ipod, with lots of begging to return to Jenny.

I'm gonna live here till I die.