Road Trip--The first leg!

Jon is doing a pediatric orthopedic surgery rotation in Jacksonville, Florida this spring. So we packed up the Murano (and a small U-haul) and drove the 22 hours to Florida. With a 4 month old baby and a needy basset hound, it was quite the experience. We left on a Thursday morning, but let me begin with Wednesday so you can fully appreciate the whole adventure...

We knew we would need to pull a trailer in order to get all of our things down to Florida, so I needed to have a hitch installed on our car. I had scheduled the hitch installation weeks ago for Wednesday morning at 7:00am. For some reason I thought this would be a quick and simple process...Maybe 20-30 minutes. I was VERY wrong. First, I overslept...Oops!! I woke up at 7:30am to Kylie's cries. I immediately called and was thankfully able to reschedule for 9:00am. I was told it would take about 2 hours, which was a little longer than I expected but would still give us plenty of time to pick the trailer up from a different U-haul location at noon. Kylie and I arrived at 9:00, dropped off the car and walked over to Hy-Vee to have breakfast with the seniors! :) When I hadn't heard from them by 11:30am, I finally walked back. When I got there, I saw that my car was still up on the ramp, and I was told it would be another hour or so. Okay, so now I was going to be late to pick up the trailer, but it would still be fine. I asked if there was a place in there where I could sit and wait. The worker said, "No, there is not, but you can sit on the stairs by the storage units." By this time, I was getting frustrated...I did have an infant with me. Anyway, by 1:30pm (4.5 hours later), I was really starting to panic. Kylie was getting hungry, I still had a ton of packing to do, and I was supposed to pick up the trailer at some point. I went back in the shop and the worker told me it would be another 10 minutes. Whew...Almost done...NOT! At 2:00pm, the hitch was installed, but my car was now dead. Luckily, Molly and Kris were able to pick me up and bring me home so that I could feed Kylie. I also called my dad, in tears, to see if he could pick the trailer up for me. He was able to get the trailer, but not before driving to Rochester to yell at the guy who killed my car. YIKES! This story is getting long, so by 4:00pm they figured out that some air pump had been disconnected during the installation. They fixed that and the car started right up. So 7 hours later, my car had a hitch and my dad had picked up the trailer! Success!

Once I had my car back, I was able to continue with packing. With the help of my mom and dad, we were able to get all packed and the trailer loaded by 11:00pm. What a crazy day! The lesson I learned was to have to the hitch installed many days in advance!

A picture of Kylie snoozing in her car seat!

Thursday morning we finished our last minute packing, and hit the road at 7:30am. The plan was to drive to Nashville (about 13 hours away) to meet up with the Hartzlers who had left on Wednesday night. The first few hours were uneventful. We knew we were going to be passing by some of our Madison friends, so we decided to stop in Beloit to meet Joe Wildenberg (a college/med school friend) for lunch. We got there around 11:00am, which was good because Kylie had a blow-out sometime during the first 4 hours and needed a diaper AND outfit change. After Kylie was cleaned up, we ate/chatted with Joe until about 12:30pm. It was fun!

We needed a lock for the trailer and Jon wanted a book on tape, and there was a Walmart across the road from the Applebee's where we ate lunch. We decided to quickly stop there for the things that we needed, but I should add that I was NOT happy about the whole book on tape thing. I don't know why this upset me, but it did, so Jon and I were already bickering about that a little bit. I decided I would quickly run into Walmart and Jon would stay by the car with Kylie and Huey. About 30 minutes later (not very quick, I know) I was back with a bike lock that didn't fit on the trailer and NO book on tape...The workers were not helpful and I was even more mad because of the terrible service than I was before I went in. Because I got the wrong kind of lock (even after Jon told me not to get a bike lock), Jon was now raging mad too. Two angry Barlows is not a good combination. Jon stuffed Huey back in the car and marched back into Walmart for the "right" kind of lock...a padlock. He found it and was back within 10 minutes. I guess he should have went in the first time. Finally, at about 1:30pm, we were back on the road.

Jon continued to drive and I continued to pump (yes, I had to do this in the car) and take care of Kylie. She is such a good baby, she spent most of the trip sleeping, and I was able to feed her while driving. She just stayed in her car seat and I climbed into the back to give her a bottle. This whole routine was working well until we tried to plug the bottle warmer into the AC/DC adapter in Terre Haute, Indiana. Suddenly, the cigarette lighter stopped working and we were no longer able to use electric devices in the car...Not a big deal, you say...Well, I was no longer able to pump. This is a VERY big deal...Pain for me and no food for Kylie! Jon thought we either blew a fuse or the adapter blew up, so we found ANOTHER Walmart. Jon ran inside to buy another AC/DC adapter in case that was the issue. Unfortunately, that was NOT the issue, and during this pit stop, Kylie had a second blow-out. We needed to find a gas station immediately. So we drove to an extremely ghetto gas station so that Jon could fix the fuse and I could take care of Kylie. Once I got Kylie into the bathroom (that did not have a changing table), I took her clothes off and realized that she literally had poop up to her armpits! How does that happen?!? So I gave her a bath in the sink (did I mention this was a disgustingly ghetto bathroom!) and put her in her 3rd outfit of the day! This ordeal took about 30 minutes, and when I got back out to the car it was still not fixed. I was panicking again (because of the lack of pumping), and suggested that we just stay in a hotel. Jon refused to stay in a hotel in that town, and I remembered that the Medela pump could be operated by batteries. So I bought some batteries and off we went...All was good again!

The last 4 hours of the drive were also uneventful...We arrived in Nashville at 11:00pm. We were warmly welcomed into the Powell's home. The Powells are friends of the Hartzlers (who were already there waiting for us). They have a beautiful home and were wonderful hosts to us! More on Nashville coming up...