Interesting and long day

Our daughter Barbara made plans to spend a week with us at the cabin while we were in North Carolina in June.  We checked our schedule and hers and this week was the best time for all of us.  Southwest Airlines is flying between Baltimore Washington International (BWI) airport now so she booked a flight there and arrived this morning.

Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:35am this morning.  We are 90 miles from BWI and it's about a 2hr + drive for us.  We went to bed early last night so we could get up at 5:30am and get ready for the long drive there.  Plenty of time to get some sleep and still make it there on time.

Except for one small problem.  I was lying in bed and started to itch in different places and thought it might be because I was in the sun a lot yesterday burning old branches and leaves.  Moldy leaves in most cases and a lot of smoke was swirling around.  Then the itching got worse and I took a benadryl and went into the bathroom and noticed some red spots.  Oh Oh!  Yep, it was a case of the hives breaking out and I took another benadryl and jumped into the cold shower and ran water over me.  That is the solution I came up with when I first had a case of the hives.

For some reason, it seems to help if I drive and run the a/c in the car to wait for the hives to go down.  So, we were out on the roads at midnight cooling down.  We wound up at a Rutters convenience store and gas station and picked up a foo foo drink which helps clear my sinus canals.  We wound up getting back to bed around 1:30am and the two benadryls took effect and I was sleeping within a few minutes.  

Then I heard the most dreadful sound.  Gerry was calling me to get up to drive to the airport and it seemed like I had only been sleeping for 10 minutes.  I don't function very well on 4 1/2 hours sleep, but we made it to the airport on time.

We picked up Barbara and her 49.5 lbs of luggage and headed for a nearby Bob Evans for breakfast.  We usually stop there when we are in the area and always seem to get the same waitress who gives us great service.  We had a nice breakfast and drank about a gallon of coffee and that woke us up enough to function.

Corridor Wine & Liquor is in the same shopping center and we headed over there to pick up a good supply of wine and beer for the next couple weeks.  They have the best prices in the area and have a great selection of both products to choose from.  Choose we did and went out of there with two carts of booze.  Canadian Club whiskey is about $24 for 1.75liter in North Carolina and $16 at Corridor.  We are set for those liquid refreshments until we leave here in late September.

Barbara hasn't been back in the area for a long time so we took her on a tour of old places and some new ones.  One place in particular used to be a quaint country road with pastures and woodlands a few years ago.  Now it is 5 acre estates with multi million dollar homes all over the place.  I liked the old scenes better than the new ones.

We used to live off of New Hampshire Avenue in Montgomery County, MD and have seen the number of churches grow by leaps and bounds over the year.  There are churches, synagogues, Muslin temples, Hindu, and just about any religion represented in a 10 miles stretch of highway.  I would guess that there are at least 40-50 churches along this stretch of highway.  Something for everyone.

Here are a few pictures of them that we took along the way.

 Amongst all these huge & beautiful places of worship sits this simple little building.  Yes, it is a prayer stop and we see people stopping there all the time.

 

The ride home had just begun for Barbara since we stopped at a Costco to pick up more items and by this time the back of the Saturn Vue was full and also 1/2 of the backseat.  What a load for the poor old car, but it rose to the task and got us back home safely.

We stopped by Cassie's house and visited for a while so the sisters could see each other again.  No matter that they were together from Wednesday to Monday of the past week, they still needed some sister time.  By now I was falling asleep in the chair and decided it was time to head back to the cabin.

Now to get to bed early tonight and catch up on some much needed sleep and get ready for the upcoming week.