On the road to our reunion

12:15 PM - We left Susan's house in the SUV, the one with 140,000 miles on it.  The three girls sat in the back seat playing electronics.  Susan drove.  I rode shot-gun.  Susan had a tomtom and she hooked it all up and stuck it to the front of the windshield.  It didn't turn on, but we convinced her it was because it needed to charge some.  She was sort of worrying about getting lost, but I reminded her that I had the IPhone.  The trip would be about 5 hours with a stop for lunch.

12:20 PM - Susan stopped for cash at the ATM at her bank.  She stopped again and got her prescription at CVS.  She passed the turn for the gas station so she had to do a U-turn.  She pulled in and started pumping the gas while I went into the station and used the restroom.  I bought some chips, a soda, a pack of bottlecaps, and some gum. 

1:48 PM - We stopped for lunch at the Apple Dumplin' Inn, a place that Susan has passed on her many trips to Evansville, but no one has ever stopped and eaten with her.  I told her it sounded good, and we looked it up and found it.  When we pulled into the parking lot Madison and I recognized the place because we had eaten there several years ago.

The place has an orchard, a petting barn full of animals, a restaurant, a country store, and a Christmas store.  We ate good country cooking first and then went to the barn to pet the animals.  I went into the barn first while the others were horsing around in the car.  I talked to the goats and the minature horses, and then I turned the corner and saw this sight:

This was Toby and he didn't move one inch when I approached.  He just sat looking at the bunnies with his tongue hanging out.  It was hilarious.  Eventually the owner came in looking for Toby, and he explained that someone had been in the barn the week before and he had opened the cage and taken out a baby bunny.  The man had then dropped the poor bunny, and Toby had ended up with an afternoon snack and had been sitting there every day since then.  The poor bunnies were shaking and shaking, and suddenly I didn't find it hilarious anymore.

3:36 PM - We were back on the road again after shopping and eating.  I bought some apple butter, some triple berry award winning jelly, and some flavored honeystixs.  The tomtom was still not working, and Susan discovered that the silver piece in the carlighter end was missing.  Ooops.  No tomtom.

5:00 PM - A man passing us in traffic mouthed to Susan that her brake lights were out.  I was on the phone with Kelly so I missed it, but Susan panicked.  Funny thing was as the man passed us and got in front of us we saw that his left brake light was also out.  ,We pulled over at a McDonald's, and I hopped out to check on things.  Sure enough the right brake light was out.  The girls all went into the fast food joint to use the facilities.  They were in there forever, and Susan had thought up all sorts of kidnapping possiblities.  She finally went inside to get them, but they weren't in the bathroom, and she about had a heart attack.  They were standing in line checking out the menu.

6:00 PM - We all got excited upon seeing the sign to our exit.  The car was shooting out some warm air conditioning, and we were an hour over our prediction of 5 hours.  As soon as we passed the sign we came to a complete stop.  Interstate 70 was down to one lane of traffic and was totally stopped for some reason that we could not see.  People were getting out of their cars and hiking up trying to see something.  We never figured it out.  We moved about a car length every 15 minutes.  Eventually we could see our exit.

Unfortunately we could not pass the two trucks in front of us.  We sat there for about 50 minutes before we reached the exit and merged, cheering at the top of our lungs.

7:00 PM - Pulled into the parking lot of our hotel and collapsed.  We had arrived.