Well one of my best friends bit the bullet and got married. We were invited to J and Jocelyne’s wedding in Dalton Georgia. Nikki and I love road trips, so we took a few days off and made it a road trip. We drove down to Asheville NC for the first night. I’ve heard a lot of rumors about a stretch of road in that neck of the woods so we figured we’d check it out. It’s call the tail of the dragon and features 318 curves in 11 miles of scenic road (well if you’re driving you don’t get to appreciate the scenery!!). You can read more about that here. That route took us through the smokey mountains which were beautiful.
Once we got to Dalton, we got to meet Jocelyne for the first time as well as her family. We went out to dinner (ribs!) in Chattanooga and had an awesome time. The next day was off to go white water rafting (a first for both me and Nikki) which was insanely fun.
Unfortunately, Nikki came down with a stomach bug the day of the wedding. Not only did she miss the wedding completely (thanks to friends of Jocelyne’s parent, we did get her some prescription medication to get her back on her feet the next day), but it meant that I had to leave my camera in the car for almost the whole day. It was a beautiful ceremony in an incredible church though, you’ll just have to trust me!
After the wedding Nikki and I drove to Myrtle beach to visit with my Grandmother and drop a few things off to my parents on the boat. They were doing their annual trip north on avalanche, but decided to try the Bahamas on their way which put Myrtle Beach “on the way home”. It was great seeing Grandma again, even if only for 2 half days.
Out trip home wasn’t as much fun as we had hoped. Apparently I picked up some of what Nikki had, and sparing the details, we had to make 16 rest stops on the way from Myrtle Beach home to RI. This turned a ~14 hour drive into a 16+ hour drive and made it a lot less fun than we had planned. (I’m sure we’ll look back at this and laugh in a few weeks/months/years.)
We drove Nikki’s MINI cooper for the entire trip, and it’s an amazing car. We averages 36mpg going 75+mph with AC on the entire time. It does very well on the highway. My only complaint was it’s lack of cruise control (we ordered it with the car, but it didn’t come with it). It was still a great road trip car for 2 people with all out gear, even with wedding clothes packed. We even used it at one point to drive 3 of the wedding party in tuxes w/o issue. You can see a map of our route below:
