Yesterday was the last tourist day of our vacation. Today, we started to go home. From Montgomery to Washington takes about 12 hours of driving time. At our tender age, we try to schedule no more than 5 hours, but because we are anxious to get home before everyone runs out of whole wheat matzos, we decided to divide it up 6 and 6.

The best laid plans….

First, I had a hard time sleeping last night, really for the first time on the trip. I assumed I would get tired mid-afternoon but hoped it wouldn’t slow me down. We got our usual start at about 9, gassed up the car and headed up Interstate 85, with a goal of reaching Charlotte. We failed (more about that ahead) and we are in Spartanburg SC for the night. About an hour and a half short of our goal.  But we tried.

At first everything went swimmingly and before you knew it, two and a half hours had passed and we were nearing Atlanta. We had two choices. Stay on 85 and go through the city, or take 285 and bypass it. An easy choice. We hadn’t been to Atlanta for a decade or so we decided to drive through and gawk at the tall buildings.

And gawkworthy they are. The tallest building is 73 stories and there almost 30 buildings 30 stories or more. I-85 and I-75 combine forces and go right through the center. Unfortunately, something was going on, half the lanes were blocked and we crept through downtown slower than you could walk through. Probably lost 30 to 40 minutes.

Digression 1. Coming into Georgia, we entered the eastern time zone. We had forgotten that. By my calculations, we lost another hour. Exactly.

Then, as we neared Greenville SC and Bob Jones University we saw an ominous sign, telling us an incident had occurred 20 miles ahead and all lanes were blocked. GPS said the delay would be well over an hour. So we diverted, taking a nice road through SC’s lake country to Anderson, which we really didn’t see, but from which we got on another state highway which took us back to I-85. Again, by my calculations, we used up over an hour to save about the same amount of time.

Digression 2 (or should I say Anti-digression 1?). As we drove this morning, we passed a number of turn offs I would have liked to explore. In Alabama, there was Tuskegee, Auburn and Opalika. In Georgia there were Callaway Gardens and Warm Springs and Something Else.

After leaving Atlanta we stopped for lunch in the, I think, suburb of Norcross, where we ate at Flora’s in a small strip shopping center, chosen randomly. Norcross, it turns out is over half Hispanic, and we could tell that Flora’s was Salvadorian. How? By the flag and the papusas. The food was pretty good and cheap, the restaurant itself the model of unpretentiousism. But what was amazing is that no one seemed to speak English. There were three young waitresses, none of whom could. The menus were in Spanish. We had entered another country. Here is my lunch:

About an hour after lunch, my lack of sleep caught up with me. We stopped at McDonald’s for a $1.39 cup of coffee and saw a very large antique mall with over 40 vendors and went in. We made some modest purchases, but if you are ever at that McDonald’s, go into the mall. It is first class.

After that, everything seemed normal until we had to divert to and from Anderson, and as we went through Greenville and approached Spartanburg, the clock on the wall said 6:30 and we figured it was time to stop. Back in another Hampton Inn, our fourth or fifth. Do we love Hampton Inns? Not really, but it avoids the “where shall we stay?” discussions.

This one, by the way, is in Moore SC, not quite Spartanburg. And, as you know, this is the most God-fearing part of a God-fearing state. That means that, except for fast food, almost all restaurants are closed on Sunday night. We had to go Latino again, this time a Mexican restaurant (or one with a Mexican name), Los Mexicanos. That is Mexican, isn’t it? The vegetable fajitas were quite good.

So that’s the story with one exception. We were leaving the hotel waiting for a light to change to turn left to go to dinner. A black car came roaring at us at a high speed — backwards!!  I swerved out of the way, it roared past us, and turned into a shopping center parking lot and sped on — all still backwards. Truth is stranger than fiction.

By the way, speaking of food, I didn’t mention that yesterday we had supper at Rock and Roll Sushi in Montgomery. Rock videos to accompany your meal. But the ahi tuna salad was memorable.

I just saw that there are 80:Rock and Roll Sushi locations. Can you believe that?