Sister Road Trip: Day One

I've been meaning to do this series of posts of the road trip my sister and I took, but ya know.....I didn't.

So here it is!

Last year, my sister and I decided before her and her husband tried to have a baby, we wanted to go on a road trip together. After much debate and many upon many changes of plans *ahem*, we decided to take a week off, hit the road and our destination stops would be: Nashville, Memphis, and Tunica. Two days before we were supposed to take off, the massive flood hit in Mississippi and the levy was about to break so Tunica got cancelled out, but we were okay with it (for the most part) and decided if we wanted to gamble, we'd head to Tulsa or something.

On April 28th we planned to hit the road at 8 AM. Of course we didn't leave on time because that would mean the Apolocolpsye was happening. After gasing up and grabbing some drinks, we blasted the music up (departure song: Ain't No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant), and we were ready to go!

Driving was pretty smooth except for the fact our lovely Tom-Tom didn't realize we were on highways, and I may have almost took a wrong exit only to jerk us back into traffic, almost making my sister wet herself and even the people behind us probably about peed themselves too.

While we knew there was a lot of flooding down south, we didn't expect so much flooding to be in Missouri. Besides seeing a few creek get high, we don't see flooding often, so you can imagine our faces when we soon were surrounded by this:

Because of all of that *waves hands around like a maniac* a few exits we were supposed to get on were no longer available. We were technically only supposed to be in Illinois for 4 miles, but a lot of exits were closed and closed and closed. Thankfully my sister brought an Atlas with us because Tom-Tom just wasn't having this re-routing thing AT ALL. Here's the thing. My sister is a nervous driver/rider. When she starts getting nervous as a rider, I, the driver, start to get nervous. When you add in a lot of traffic surrounding me, I sometimes...well....freak out.

SO I may or may not have whipped the car over onto a country road, spewing gravel everywhere, while my sister screamed, "WHO THE HELL TAUGHT YOU TO DRIVE?!?!" And I may have screamed back: "I TOLD YOU I DIDN'T WANT TO DRIVE THREE EXITS AGO SO HERE YA GO, SUCKA!" And then she drove.

Even though I was cursing Illoinois and it's po-dunk backroad highway we got stuck on (I really, really had to pee for 30 freaking miles), the most glorious thing ever appeared on a billboard:

A Life-Sized Statue of Superman!!

Our little atlas route had taken us right into Metropolis, Illionis. I didn't even know there was such a thing! I yelled out: STOP! STOP! Gave my sister another heart attack, and we pulled into the place, following the lovely pointy arrows and did a bit of Superman sightseeing:

Oh, did I mention we kidnapped Cheryl and carried her around with us?!

Then we saw the saddest thing, a Harrah's Casino underwater.

A moment of silence, please.

After that we piled back into the car, hit the highway, went through Kentucky for a brief moment

And whaddup! No more detours and soon we saw the glorious sign of Tennessee!

By the time we finally hit Nashville, we were beat. Traffic was NUTS! When we found our hotel, Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, it took us about 10 minutes just to figure out where we were supposed to go. That place was HUGE and was like its own little village.

Being stuck in a car for almost 9 and a half hours, (when our car ride was only supposed to take about 6), we unpacked everything, and went exploring in the hotel. We ate this Mexican restaurant that had the best salsa ever. Drank some drinks, wandered around a bit more, ate some ice cream, and decided that since it was already after 9 PM, we would just hang out in our room for the night. I suffer from insomnia. I have never been one of those people who put their heads on their pillow and conk out. I crawled into that Heaven of a bed (seriously best bed ever) and within 20 minutes this scene happened:

Brandie: Look Amber! Sex & the City is on!
Me: .......
Brandie: Amber? *looks over*
Me: *out like a light with a little bit of drool*

And that concludes the first day of the Sister Road Trip.