The LONG Road Home

We just spent the better part of June in Alabama.  A few backdated blogs will outline our trip of fun, fun and more fun.  We started the LONG journey home on Saturday night.  We knew it wouldn't be possible to make Lillian ride for the whole 15 hours so we decided to break it up.  We would leave around 8pm on Saturday and drive as long as we can and stop and get a room for a few hours.  I had requested that we choose somewhere to stop so I could look into hotels.  Jason insisted we could just stop somewhere.  I'm NOT a "let's just grab a room for the night" kinda girl.  I decided I had enough to keep up with and let him handle the room situation.
We made it to Vicksburg, MS and decided it was time to call it a night.  We stopped at a large exit and checked with 4 hotels...All booked solid.  We had to wonder, why on EARTH all the hotels in Vicksburg, MS would be booked up?  We never did find out what that town had to offer.  We went down a few exits and stopped at The Americas Inn and Jason got out.  He went up to the check-in WINDOW, yes, window and stood in line.  The kids and I are sulking in the car and I'm refusing to BLINK and trying to figure out how I'm going to explain to the kids why we are taking shifts to sleep.  Jason finally thought better of the situation and got back in the car.  Neither of us had to question his decision to leave.  It was a relief, even if it meant driving longer, much longer!
We hit the interstate with hopes of seeing another town soon.
We rolled into Tullah, LA a little after midnight.  Our first two hotels were a strikeout.  Our last resort was the Motel 8 on the opposite side of the interstate.  Jason went inside to check and came back out with good news and bad news.  Good news-they had two rooms left.  Bad news was there was one double-Smoking and one king-non-smoking.  Yep, you guessed it.  We were all sleeping in ONE bed that night.  It was only a mild sense of relief to be staying in a questionable hotel in the middle of nowhere. We quickly jerked the bedspread off bc they don't wash those you know. We checked the bedding, inspected the seams of the bed (like we'd even know what to look for in bed bugs) and gave the room a once over.  Then we piled the kids in bed, Lillian included. She probably had the most room of all because she was between Jason and I and we were both worried about her.   Everyone slept in their clothes and we had two toothbrushes between us as well.  While inspecting the room Jason noticed something was still in the mini microwave.  We DID NOT open to find out what.  I wondered if we would even get any sleep at all but surprisingly we all did sleep.  I woke up first around 7am and wasted no time dragging them OUT of that place!
 Who knew a family of 5 could occupy a King size bed!  It was worth it to be home at 3pm and not midnight on sunday night.  It really broke the trip up well.  Next time, I'll go with my gut and book us a room BEFORE we hit the road.