Day 1 to Day 3

We have been having the greatest time on vacation so far. Here is a recap of our trip so far.

We left on Saturday, June 7 at about 2:30pm. We dropped our dog, Miss Anna, off at Daniel and Stephanie Prukop's house for the duration of the vacation. We know she is in very capable hands there. We asked Daniel to take our family picture before we left.














You will note that April has something in her hand. Her daddy is a genius, but we all knew that already...he came up with the idea of a map that April could use to see where we are on our journey. As we get to cities on the map, she will put stickers on the map to note where we are. Here is what it looked like at the beginning of the trip...











We try to stop at the visitor information center when we enter each new state, so here is a picture of April at the "Arkansas House"















And after our first day, the map looked like this...

















We stayed the first night in West Memphis, Arkansas. The next morning we woke up, crossed the Mississippi River and stopped at the Tennessee Visitor Center and got a few pictures there...





















We stopped at a McDonalds that we thought had a playland for the kids that day, and there wasn't ...so here is how the kids passed their time that day....
















We also found a treat for Carl on a billboard while driving on the freeway....A NASCAR outlet!




































We ended day 2 at the home of Mark and Jane Abernathy in Morristown, TN. Mark is our former Asst. Pastor at MBC and we miss this family so much! We had a great time catching up with the Abernathy's and spent the night there.

We woke up on Day 3 and proceeded to travel *the scenic route* through the Great Smoky Mountains. It was quite beautiful, but very windy and up and down and wow....Mark did a great job of driving through the mountains. It's just not something you see in Texas!
















We passed into North Carolina through the Great Smoky Mountains, so didn't get to stop by a visitor center there. Carl and Mark wanted to go see the Raceworld USA, so April and I came back to the hotel and took advantage of the pool while the boys tooled around at Michael Waltrip's production facility.


















So Day 3 comes to a close and we are at a Microtel in Charlotte, NC. Here's our map at the end of Day 3!