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We pulled back into our homestead this morning at 7:47am. We went around to the door and in the window pawing the glass was two of our kittens (Darjeeling von Teacup, and Pavel), they missed us.

I will go through a rundown of things to the best of my memory.

The trip to Moultrie was hot, very hot, apparently unbeknownst to us our R12 refrigerant had leaked out of the A/C, so no air conditioning. We also decided to not take the I-75 bypass through Atlanta. What was interesting is that along the route somewhere on the outskirts of Atlanta a tractor trailer had crashed, this caused quite a bit of a traffic jam. To futher complicate the matter, several people’s cars could not stand the heat of extreme stop/go driving, which led to even more traffic congestion.

The weather held up til around Tifton which is around 30mi from our destination, then rain, and vertical lightening, which is something we do not get here in the Appalachians.

We were received warmly by the Viohl’s with a quite delightful tortellini and a rather nice wine.

Saturday, Carrie Viohl, was scheduled to shoot a wedding which started out at a quite nice plantation manor house, where everyone dressed up for the actual wedding. The manor house was quite lovely, extravagant in every detail, I could just imagine Scarlett descending any of the staircases. Elli helped shoot the wedding. The wedding was quite unusual. The wedding itself was set in a theatre, and involved a vintage 50’s police car which was emblazoned with the words “Mayberry” on the side. The bride and father of the bride exited the car on the stage and proceeded to be wed by a judge. The wedding reception party was a blast and was held at the Moultrie Arts Center, the food was grande, and the wine quite nice.

Sunday, found us at Carrie’s studio (which was lovely beyond words). That day their was scheduled two photoshoots, one being birthday party for a 1-yr old.

Monday, I started planning our return trip, checking out various bypasses, and examining the route that yahoo driving directions had provided. We also noticed a crack in our car’s coolant recovery tank. Carrie’s husband was quite helpful in repairing the crack.

Tuesday, Carrie’s husband helped us diagnose our A/C’s problem. Apparently a leak had drained our freon (R12 type). One of the things about R12 refrigerant is that it’s not available to the public due to environmental concerns and is no longer in use. The newer vehicles use an R134 refrigerant which is more environmentally safe, and available at even WalMart. Needless to say I will have to replace a few items in our car’s A/C system to fit it for use with R134 refrigerant. We leave Moultrie with our car reading 193,440 miles, and on the way through Georgia back to KY we make a few stops. One of my favorite stops was at “We’re Nuts” nut store, where they sold some of the most tasty nut products, like chocolate covered peanuts, almonds, pecan’s, along with other goodies such as; yoghurt covered nuts, pralines, jalapeno and garlic nuts, peaches, and vidalia onions. We purchased caramel popcorn + pecans, jalapeno peanuts, garlic peanuts, and a 3lb bag of roasted peanuts. We also made a stop in Dalton Georgia (around 10:30pm) at a Walmart supercenter and picked up some more ginger root (since I left my first bit in Carrie’s fridge), and a 5l cask of wine. Something somewhere in the Walmart store set off a very very very bad asthma reaction with Elli (), hives and all. She had to sit down in the floor lobby of the store while I ran out to the car to get her puffer (albuterol). I was quite scared, miles from home, and her being so ill at such a late time of night. The attendant at Walmart was very kind and offered to help in anyway. After exiting the store (along with the albuterol), she started feeling better, and we continued on our way home. We pulled into a rest stop in Gordon County GA and had a bit to eat, and let our kitty play around a bit. Returned back to the road and made it to a rest stop in TN right before I40 splits to I81, it was now 2am. We stayed in the rest stop trying to get some sleep til around 6am. We did get lost somewhere after Knoxville, into some bumfuck area which I will be honest had zero signs of any kind and almost every street was a one-way to a dead-end.

Wednesday, I have since, slept, looked at some photos I took on the way home, and emptied the car of our gear, and now posting this lengthy post.