Long Drive Day 2

Today we got up and drove and drove and drove! A long day of driving!

Last night I slept pretty well and somehow this bed is longer than normal which is great for me! Normally I have to make sure to scrunch up towards the top of the bed so my head is almost touching the side and then me feet will just fit touching the other side (and I normally wake up in the middle of the night because I had scooched down in my sleep and my legs had to go at an angle and so then I have to scrunch up at the top again. Last night thought? I didn’t move up to the top and laid down…and my feet don’t touch the other side! If I really stretch out I can just barely touch both sides. I really have no idea how that is possible as we have had this same van before, but somehow the pop-outs are slightly wider! No waking up and having to move up to make room for my feet! That is great!

So we got up, ate breakfast, and headed on our way. I hadn’t planned stops for the day as we are trying to just get up to Norway asap and we tried listening to an audio book this morning (Moby Dick which we are loving!), but for me that makes the time pass so slowly! I don’t know why but I’m listening and then like okay well a half hour had to have passed and I look at the time and it’s been a few minutes. So we switched over to music this afternoon and that was much better. That and the scenery started getting nicer as we drove. More hills and we are far enough north now what the trees are changing colors which I love!

Our first break stop was at this rest stop right before this bridge which had a nice little path down to walk under it a bit. So that was fun. Then as we were driving through Jönköping there was a lot of art on the side of the road (my favorite was what looked like a giant paper mache long neck dinosaur head. He was really silly) so since I kept almost missing them I tried to search on the map for more fun things and found a rock on top of a tree trunk so I was ready to take a photo of that! And then saw a plane too!

Lunch was at a grocery store parking lot so that wasn’t much fun, but our afternoon break was at a rest stop by a lake where you could walk along the lake a bit (and swim if you so wanted. We did see someone getting out of the water…it was a bit too cold for that for me!) and it was nice to stretch our legs a bit.

We got dinner out (burgers again as they are so good!) and then drove on to the rest stop where we are staying the night. It was overcast and a bit drizzly/misty all day, but after dinner it was raining so hard! Got to where we stopped a bit later as there was so much water in the road in the “divots” from the wear from cars driving on it so I had to try and drive a bit farther over close to the middle line…and luckily there wasn’t that much traffic so it worked.

Oh the other thing - it was dark just after we ate dinner, but we drove on another 2 hours and the high beams on the cars and trucks are so bright! You could see when they were turned on farther away the whole sky/all the low rain clouds would light up so bright! It was crazy! Ours are definitely not that bright…but it was fun watching it.

It was a really long day driving and we have another one tomorrow…though I might look and see if there is a short hike in the afternoon and just not go as far. It’s been a while since we have tried to go so far in one go (Spain would have been the last one and that want as far - that was more like 2.5 days instead of 3), as normally we would have arrived wherever we were heading today so that’s fine, but three long days of travel is a lot. I told Raymond that if I suggest doing this again to tell me no! Add an extra travel day in! Hopefully the weather is a bit better tomorrow, though it looks like this first area we are going to normal gets a lot of rain so…we shall see! But tomorrow night will be spent in Finland which is kind of exciting.Read more