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Today was a driving day. Plan was to get to my Mom’s house in Atlanta for dinner, so we left Paducah, KY around 10:45a, figuring we’d be at our destination about 7:00p EDT (we crossed into our last time zone … woohoo!). Mom was making Western Spaghetti, one of my favorites. Heidi and I were looking forward to a home cooked meal…it had been a week! Well, “Lori” kept shaving minutes off our eta, so I started looking at the atlas to see if we could cut across and surprise Casey & Geena Quillin, who run a gas station/mini mart/bbq restaurant (Sanky’s) in a little town called Cumming, GA. Casey and I go back almost 30 years, and considered one of my best friends. Since we are in kind of a rush to Charlotte, we figured this will be the only opportunity on the drive across to see them. We took Route 20 from I75 to Route 400, and I have never in my life seen a stretch of road with so many abandoned houses..let alone surrounded by brand new developments with homes ranging from half a mil, to a mil plus! It was really strange. Anyway, I was anticipating a big surprise, since I know both Casey and Geena probably consider Sanky’s more of a home than their own. As the day got older, we started to get a little worried that they may have headed home for the day, being a weekend an all. When we arrived, I thought I recognized CQs car, so I felt the detour was going to be worth it. We parked, walked in and didn’t see either of them behind the counter, so I started to get a little deflated. We asked the cashier if they happened to be around, and they had left a few hours earlier..Oh well. We will just have to catch up the next time! That put us at Mom’s a half hour earlier than she expected us, and didn’t recognize the car when we pulled in the driveway. It is kind of weird seeing your own car in the driveway at a house you’ve only visited before by air or rental car! It was a beautiful evening in Atlanta, and we ate our dinner outside. My sister and her husband, Anna-Katherine and Geordie, had come over and we visited until about 11:00. We were beat. I crawled into bed with every intention of writing today’s entry. I woke up an hour later with a hot lap, screensaver staring at me, and my hands on the keyboard! I guess I was tired. The end of our adventure is near.