Officially headed south!

On Thursday Jan. 24th we woke up at my parents house, where we had spent the past two nights since our house was all packed up and all our house hold goods were on a moving truck. I have to say it was quite sad walking out of our house that last time as it was completely empty. Walking out of our empty house straight into our new journey.... we drove Ryan's car up onto the trailer hooked it up to tow it behind my car. (oh and p.s. it was -5 and very, VERY windy while him and I were out trying to get the car onto the trailer!)

And we were buckled in and ready to hit the open road...

We had a few days to make our way south. We also had quite a few family and friends who wanted to keep up with our journey, so we posted as much as we could on facebook and they followed us there. My sis-in law moved out to NV not too long ago, and along their trip, she got pictures of the state signs as they entered. So I stole that idea (Thanks Lauren! ;) ) I did miss the first few signs, I guess I wasn't really thinking about it seeing the 1st one is only minutes away from our home in NH anyway... It took me until PA to catch up haha... but I did get other pics before hand....

I didn't get the N.Y state sign... but I got this sign on a bridge we passed over going through.. that counts right!? 

And here it is, the first state sign I did manage to catch ;)

The ride was pretty nice, and different form what we have done in the past... we have driven south a few times. (Well, South of NH haha) mostly to NJ when Ryan was stationed there and we made a family trip to P.A. and also to F.L. a couple years ago.. but those times we stuck more to route 95 down the eastern coast. This time we were more inland and it was a nice change.

We drove through to Pocono Mountains and further south through the Blue Ridge mountains.. We pretty much drove through the appalachian mountains. 

We drove 8 hours on our first day, watching the sun set from the car and stopping at dinner time when we were hungry and ready to call it a night.

On Friday we got up at our hotel, had breakfast and headed out again as earlier as we could trying to hit as little bad weather as possible. It was very grey and dreary, not like Thursday at all. 

I did get the state signs on this dreary morning though!! The snow started about half way through Virginia.. and we learned that they do NOT plow the roads like they do in NH... man were they crappy! At least we are from the north and can drive int he snow, but it isn't that fun when it's all slush and you have a trailer on the back.

So needless to say Friday was a bit slow going for a while. The kids did awesome in the car though. We really couldn't have asked for much better. 4 kids, one newly potty trained and only 3 potty stops each of the first two days in the car! They were content, snuggled up in the back seats, watching movies and playing on their nabi tablets. Thank God for technology! :)

Despite the nasty weather, the mountains were beautiful and I had to take some pictures of them...

We finally made it into North Carolina... still cold and yucky and I couldn't resist the photo of the car when we stopped for gas!

We trucked on after that, the weather turned to freezing rain in South Carolina and I missed that state sign. It was too dark and wet. We learned that people in South Carolina drive like maniacs! Freezing rain + frozen connectors in the highway + crazies driving 100 mph = the Washburn family at a complete stop for a about an hour looking at tail lights and blue lights.

We finally got moving and it started to dry up, we had planned on driving about 8 hours but the weather slowed us and we had to make a housing appointment the next day on post..... so we drove on. We drove until about 11pm. We made it to Georgia and got a hotel room for the night.

The next morning (Saturday) we grabbed some breakfast at a cracker barrel near the hotel and then it was off... destination...Fort Rucker. We were headed down through Atlanta now and then to cross the border and enter a new time zone in Alabama!

Yup, we drove way down yonder by the Chattahoochee...

And then before we knew it.... we were in Alabama! And we went back in time and hour :)

We drove down a so called "highway" through some crazy back woods country! I was honestly a little nervous and Ryan apologized a few times for taking us here haha....

Lots of homes/shacks like this. This picture doesn't even really show you how run down this is. Every intersection looked the same, and I swear the same 10 old guys were sitting out front of the run down gas station at each corner! With their big ol' bbq going in the parking lot. We even passed a shed, with an open sign on the door and a sign next to that reading, "No entry without proper I.D." I guess that was the bar? I'm sure the people are all very nice, but WOW talk about some run down poor country out there! There was just nothing but shacks and cattle for miles!

Well, thankfully it began to build back up into some civilization as we got closer to the post ;) I was getting a little worried for a while there. We finally made it to Fort Rucker around 12:30 on Saturday.

We made it in time for our housing appointment and we were lucky enough to get right into our house that same day! It would be another few days before our truck with all our stuff showed up... in the mean time we had air mattresses and got acquainted with our new surroundings.

                                      

and there was plenty of room for P.T. before our furniture showed up ;)

So here we are... we have begun our new journey and so far it is going well. We miss the north, there is no denying that and I know I will miss it more in the summer heat! More so though, we miss our family and friends... however we know our families and friends are praying for us and will be coming to visit us very soon!