Family trip to Knoxville

We just returned from 6 days in Knoxville...well, ok, 4 days in Knoxville and 2 days of travel. I have to head back to work on Monday and I'm having a hard time remembering what I do for a living. I'm either a telemarketer or a shepherd..or maybe I herd telemarketers. Hopefully I'll figure it out before Monday. Here's my trip report for day one, once again proving that getting there isn't half the fun.

I got a lot of strange looks from people when I told them where we were going over our holiday break. I’d say we’re heading to Tennessee, and they would assume Nashville or Memphis. I’d correct them and say we’re going to Knoxville, and they’d ask what’s in Knoxville. I’d say “What’s not in Knoxville?” and that’s about where the conversation would end. It was probably easier that way, otherwise I’d have to explain we were visiting my wife’s “family” (they’re not technically family, they are my wife’s cousin’s cousin, if that makes any sense). The bottom line is they are hospitable, willing to put us up in their parents condo, and a lot of fun to hang out with.
We set off at 5:30 am for a 12-hour car ride with our 3 children. The girls are 8 and 7, so they are old enough to entertain themselves. They are also old enough to ask a million times how much farther. Our son is a year and a half and is not the greatest traveler. We had hoped all 3 of the children would sleep for the first few hours of the drive, and we were wrong. I made a tactical error by not taking interstate 80 as I figured going straight south would get me out of the ice faster (when Iowa is not getting mountains of snow, we get some hellacious ice storms. One went through the night before we left). The problem is I-80 is heavily travelled, so the ice was probably not as bad.
Between the weather and the kids, the first leg of our drive was torturous. We stopped in Hannibal, MO (motto: we sure hope people don’t get tired of Mark Twain) for McDonalds. I re-fueled and headed toward St. Louis. We expected light traffic through St.Louis, andwe were right. We also spotted our first Waffle House. In addition to being the gateway to the west, I’ve always felt St. Louis is the doorstep to the south. Zach was excessively loud throughout the first leg, and he continued it into our second leg. He has a limited vocabulary, it’s a lot of Mama! Dada! And everything he says has an exclamation point. He eventually faded off to sleep and once that happened we decided we needed to go as far as we could. We made it to the Kentucky/Tennessee border, opting to stop on the Kentucky side for KFC. I reasoned Kentucky Fried Chicken should be better in Kentucky than anywhere else. We stuffed ourselves with greasy chicken and the wife took over driving duties the rest of the way to Knoxville.
Our hosts in Knoxville, Jennifer and Cheryl, along with Lydia (Cheryl’s daughter) and Pappajohn’s Pizza greeted us upon our arrival. In spite of our slow start, we made to Knoxville in just over 12 hours. We ate, visited, had deep conversations about our respective family’s neurosis, and called it a night.