coming home

We weren't exactly ready for vacation to be over but yet it was time to come home. Andy decided he would like to drive through Philadelphia so he mapped out a different course then the one we had used to get to Virginia. I was up for the adventure!! Here are a few last shots of the ocean.

I really really really wanted to drive through the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel. It was out of our way but I knew the kids would love it. This is the entrance into the first tunnel.

There were a lot of bridges and tunnels on the way home. All through Maryland actually. The kids were in heaven.

If you look close you can see an eagle's nest in the tree. Isaac actually spotted the eagle but the rest of us missed it:(

This is it for pictures coming home. We ended up getting stuck in the worst traffic back up ever!! For 6 hours!! After that we were all cranky and just ready to get home. We nixed Philadelphia all together. Another time maybe.

We ended up driving until 3am before we decided that we MUST get some rest. We ended up in some dumpy motel that made us all sick. We were told the room was smoke free but there is NO WAY that was the truth. We slept for about 5 hours and then got out of there as quickly as possible!

We made it to New Phila to pick Shiloh up just a couple of hours later. It was quite a happy reunion let me tell you. We've never been away from her for that long before.

We were so anxious to get home that we didn't stop anywhere else that day. We just got on the highway right there and set out for what we thought would be our normal 2 hour trip home. Boy were we wrong!! Andy had somehow taken a wrong turn. I can only guess it was sheer exhaustion on his part! Afterall we've made this trip a hundred times now!! We decided to turn Navalie on and she was taking us on strictly dirt and gravel roads!! Seriously!! Our normally highway loving GPS had somewhere along the way developed an affinity for dirt and gravel. We spent probably 50 miles on dusty backroads. It was awful. Andy was getting completely fed up. Finally Isaac fessed up that he may have changed her settings just a bit!! It ended up taking us close to 3 hours to get back home again! Where I promptly headed to bed and fell fast asleep:)

Just an FYI...Maryland's rest stops are among the grossest I've ever seen. For real. Completely disgusting. Maia and I both threw up a little bit in one of them. Virginia's rest stops on the other hand were very clean and well kept!! I should know...we stopped about a million times!!