Gainesville, Florida --> Spokane, Washington: Day 1

February 25th was a beautiful day in Gainesville, FL. After taking out last final at 8:30am (which was a joke), we mosied on over to AAA to get a TripTix (best.thing.ever.) for our travels. Once that mission was complete, we stopped for gas, set the odometer and started out on our 3 day journey to Spokane, WA.

Departing conditions --> 10:58am Friday, February 25th, 2011

• City: Gainesville, FL
• Temp: 76 F
• Gas: $44.22/13.010 gallons

The first leg of the trip was a breeze. We flew through Florida and made good time into Georgia.

All that driving and road construction and crappy traffic made us hungry, so we decided to stop and grab a bite to eat.  While in the car, we decided to eat at places that we don't have in Florida or ones that we have never heard of...so, our first stop:

• Time: 2:12pm Friday, February 25, 2011
• City: Macon, Georgia
• Temp: 72 F
• Gas: $28.71/8.840 gallons
• Miles driven: 240
• Eating place: JL's BBQ

Unfortunately, this was our last time eating at a random place in a random city. Reason: while trying to take a picture of us in front of JL's BBQ to document our stop, a Georgian started laughing at me. He then offered to take our picture, which I accepted, but then got all weird and wanted to tell me something but thought it might offend me (pretty sure he was either going to say something about my the gators or my boobs...). After a quick lunch at JL's, we got back in the car and got the hell out of Georgia!

Another goal of ours was to take a picture of every welcome sign. We got Georgia, but we couldn't get Tennessee's since it was dark and the picture came out blurry.

Insert Stop 2:

• Time: 6:13pm Friday, February 25th 2011
• City: Chattanooga, TN --->welcome center
• Temp: 50 F
• Miles driven: 426.9

We started to get a little hungry and low on gas, so we made Stop 3:

• Time: 7:37pm (central time now) Friday, February 25, 2011
• City: Nashville, TN
• Temp: 40 F
• Eating place: Subway inside of a gas station with a very rude sandwhich maker
• Gas: $39.77/12.054 gallons
• Miles driven: 572.4

After refueling both our stomachs and the gas tank, we had the wind in our sails and we cruised for a good while. We sped through the rest of Tennessee then made our way through Kentucky and Illinois.

The sign didn't come out well, so we stopped at the welcome center, and this is what we found!

With the feeling of superman, we were energized!

I was greeted into Missouri by the Gateway Arch. Even though it was dark, the arch was lit up and thus gave us the opportunity to capture its beauty.

Then I quickly realized that that's all the beauty that lies in St. Louis, MO (especially EAST St. Louis). I, a Floridian, and knowing nothing of "bad parts" of St. Louis, decided to stop for a quick stretch and to fill up the gas tank in E. St. Louis. Margaret, of sound mind and concern for her life, prompted me to turn the engine back on and keep driving (Thanks Margaret! I owe you). We find out the next morning that a trucker was murdered in East St. Louis...thank goodness we didn't stop!  So we kept driving until we felt a little more comfortable with our surroudings. Stop 4:

• Time: 1:03am (central) Saturday, February 26th, 2011
• City: St. Louis, MO
• Temp: 34 F
• Gas: $36.13/11.294 gallons --> The gas station used gas pumps that resembled a penis (aka: penis pump)
• Miles driven: 873.8

So we kept on driving our of St. Louis and into the night. We really wanted to keep driving so we could make it by Sunday evening, but we just couldn't go anymore. We were exhausted (thanks Dr. Mobley for not letting us take the exam the night before so we could have gotten a good night's sleep). Stop 5 (SLEEP):

• Time: 2:41am (central), February 26th, 2011
• City: New Florence, MO
• Temp: 28 F
• Resting place: America's Best Inn's --> $70/night
• Miles driven: 948.8