Day 7: Thanksgiving on the road

It was brought to my attention by one alert follower of this blog (the same one that also lives in my house) that I hadn't posted about the trip home. The highlight was a visit to Waffle House, if that tells you anything about how exciting the 15-hour drive home was. So without further ado...

Once again, we got off to a slow start. The ship docked early and we were at breakfast when they announced our floor could disembark. With a 15-hour drive ahead, I had hoped to be off the ship quickly to get on the road.
We hustled the kids and Gimpy through the disembarking process and got to customs behind roughly 12,000 other passengers. We got ushered to a customs line that actually moved faster than I expected, so we got on the road around 9 am.
Zach had been asking for Chicken Donald’s (McDonald’s to most people) for the entire vacation, and he finally got his wish on Thanksgiving Day. We stopped somewhere in northern Mississippi for lunch with temps in the 70’s. By the time we got to St. Louis for dinner it was below freezing and when we got home the temp was hovering around 10. My personal favorite part of the drive home was the greatest of all southern food, the Waffle House. From their picture menu for the illiterate to the insane calorie count, that place is all-around awesome. After gassing up next door to the Waffle House, we high-tailed it home and pulled into Iowa City around midnight.