After yesterday’s driving debacle, we all woke up eager to retake the road to get to our final destination.  Indeed, today’s effort was much less taxing.  We more than made up for the frustration we experienced   north of the Mason-Dixon line and into Virginia by taking advantage of a 70 mph speed limit (which meant an 80 mph speed limit when I was at the wheel) for most of the remaining 400 miles of our journey.

The girls were amazing the entire trip.  Other than an episode of bickering that was over before it really started, Chloe and Sophie got along splendidly and did not complain even once (I swear, I am not lying or exaggerating about this) about the length of the voyage.

The girls watched “Fantasia” for the first time, and Chloe especially enjoyed it.  I think they both liked it even more when I told them that “Fantasia” was the first film I saw in a theater, sort of.  It turns out my parents had to remove me from the theater in the middle of the movie because I was so scared.  No surprise there.  I had just turned one year old when the movie was re-released in December 1969. Between the story of evolution segment starring the dinosaurs and the scary devil-like character in a later sequence, I had every reason to be scared.  Hell, even Mickey Mouse was a little freaky as the sorcerer’s apprentice.  I was only one!  What were my parents thinking (or smoking)?

We played games, too – Rubberneckers is a new favorite car ride diversion.  Chloe and Sophie thought my feeble attempts to get someone in another car to give me the peace sign were pretty funny (it was part of the game, for crying out loud).  It took a couple of hours before a person in a passing car obliged, and when he did, it was only because Sophie came to my rescue by doing the peace sign at the same time as me.  Let’s face it, who can resist an adorable smiling kid with curly hair channeling “Hair?”

We also kept a running list of the different license plates we spied.  Believe it or not, we’ve already identified 34 states’ plates, including Oregon, California, Nevada and Wisconsin, and those of two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec).  How cool would it be to spy the rest of the lower 48 (we’ve pretty much ruled out Hawaii and Alaska, although I do recall seeing an Alaska plate during our Hilton Head trip two years ago)?

On tap for tomorrow:  some much-needed R&R on the beach.