Out of the gates.

Miles driven: Greenwich to Nashville – 930

Fourteen hours in the car. Let that sit and marinate for a second. Neither Randi nor I had ever attempted a car ride of that length in one straight shot before. But, why not dive in head first on this road trip and do our longest drive on Day 1? (And I’ll be honest, it was daunting for Google maps to announce that it would be 497 miles until our next turn). How did it go? We dominated that drive (500 miles on I80 in particular). A 6:30 am departure from Greenwich yesterday concluded with an 8:30 pm arrival at our adorable Airbnb in east Nashville. 

Lessons Learned (and some general thoughts) from Day One: 

1. Really glad VT doesn’t allow billboards.

2. Clean bathrooms at gas stations are hard to come by.

3. We were constantly reminded of Jesus on this drive via the enormous crosses on the side of 1-81…for 500 miles. Bible Belt confirmed. 

4. Chick-Fil-A is amazing. Period.

5. There are an incredible amount of tractor trailers on the road. Especially in Pennsylvania. Driving recklessly…while smoking a cigarette and doing a crossword (no joke). 

6. Music compatibility is clutch for road trip calibration. Music hits the soul. Especially throwback country hits from college.

7. Thank god for Google; it answered 95% of the questions we had on this leg of the trip. (Examples: where do you cross from the eastern time zone into the central zone, Thomas Rhett’s wife, and what time does the Bachelorette start in Nashville…8 o’clock? 7 o’clock? …the time zones clearly confused us)

8. Tennessee rolls like Vermont: luscious green hills and mountains.

9. Cops are just playin’ …they’re not really taking radar (they’re definitely eating Chick-Fil-A in their cars)

10. Nothing like the Bachelorette finale to motivate you to shave off minutes from a 14 hour drive in order to pull us through the last stretch of driving…

 …only to learn that the television in the Airbnb doesn’t function well. At all. And you’re instead left staring at a Robbie’s blurry face post-breakup (we know because US Weekly kept a time stamped article of the episode highlights). This was after I left my credit card at the restaurant we got takeout from. Who knew the 14 hour drive would be the smoothest part of our day.