Milly let us sleep in until 9:00 this morning, which was awful nice of her.  My dad was expecting to leave pretty early so I thought everyone else (besides Baba, of course) would be gone, but they were still packing up when Amanda, Milly and I got up.

Amanda and I were originally planning to leave around 2:00, but we packed up (well, she mostly packed while I mostly watched Milly and Addison) and were ready to go shortly after everyone else left at about 10:30, so we said our good byes to Baba and were on the road around 11:30 after stopping for smoothies.

Mandy the GPS took us a different way to get to the interstate than the way we came.  Amanda, who was driving first, was a little stressed about that at first, since she took us out in the country a bit.  We decided that it looked familiar though, and we got home at about 9:30.

We only made two stops.  One was at the Tamarack in West Virginia, sort of a super rest stop that appears to have become a traditional stop for us, and the other was to get gas in Virginia because we remembered it was cheaper there.  We actually stopped at the same place we stopped on the way up, which was right at the halfway point (time-wise at least) and that’s where we switched drivers both times.

Milly was good and slept most of the way, though she woke up and got fussy towards the very end of the trip, which seems to be a hallmark of hers.  She was obviously happy to be back home though.  Amanda took her up to the nursery and she immediately climbed into her rocking chair.  It’s funny how you look forward to the familiar things when you get home from a long trip, and Milly showed me that it’s something instilled in people from a very young age.

Karen, Amanda’s mom, was home when we got there.  She had come to watch the animals for the second half of our vacation.

Zach Dotsey