So we broke a few "Rules"

I'll start by saying that we went up Charlottesville VA to meet/visit a friend and her family and it was awesome. I thought Charlottesville was adorable and I now want to take my little sister up there and go camping. I will make her enjoy it (no seriously, I think she will).

We needed a roof rack. We have been packed like sardines in the car, hoping we could make it work, but we just couldn't. So we spent a good 2 hours trying to find one. Dick's Sporting Goods had 2 but couldn't find the keys to unlock them. The Subaru dealership wanted $500 (!?!?!??!) for one plus installation costs. Finally we found the perfect one at Sears, ON SALE and was easy to install. We call it "Loretta's Hat".

So then we decided to go a bit out of our ways to see Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge. Natural Bridge is weird, but a good kind of quirky weird. Their attractions consist of some caverns (that we didn't go see, because the country is full of caverns and I really would like to see the caverns in Carlsbad again, and I'm assuming if you've seen one cavern, you've probably seen em all. I could be wrong tho). ANYWAYS, their other attractions included Dinosaur Kingdom, a Haunted House, a Wax Museum (with a factory tour!) and a toy museum. O, and Foamhenge (like Stonehenge, but made of foam). We did 3 of these. Dino, Haunted and Foam. They were all awesome and completely worth the trip out.

But the plan was to see these things and then head up to the outskirts of DC and set up camp. So we started driving and realized we are not going to make it to camp before dark. Not good, and against one of our "Rules". So we decided we'd drive till we felt like stopping, eat dinner and stay in a hotel for an evening. We had said we'd do a hotel when we wanted/needed it, so no biggie.

During our drive we were caught in a HUGE rain storm. I'm talking driving down the interstate at 30 with hazzards on rainstorm. Not fun at all, but it made us all the more happy we weren't camping because that would have sucked. So we sorta dodged a bullet there.

So we find a Cracker Barrel and stop for dinner. I had chicken fried chicken with a side of fried okra and steak fries (to dip in the gravy). SO GOOD. mmmmmmmmm. Then we pull into a hotel for the night. Only they are all booked up. What the hell? It's not like we're near anything important. So we pull into the next. AGAIN. All booked up.

Apparently the 40 miles garage sale was going on this weekend and EVERY hotel in the 40 mile radius was completely full up. Not good. Oz was seriously done with being in the car and he has acquired the highest squeal EVAR. I was on complete edge and feeling sick, hearing his cries an it till us close to an hour to finally find a hotel to stay in. A bit more than we wanted to pay, but we got a good night's sleep. And thereyago.

O The Rules. We had said we would never do the late night driving not knowing where we'd stay and have Oz all stressed out. *sighs*