Days 1 & 2, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina

Welcome back to our Long Time Gone family travel blog. We're glad to have you along! This year we're taking four weeks to travel down the southeastern U.S. coast, from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to St. Augustine, Fla., then Orlando, then Mobile, Ala., then home. And away we go...
Our first two days of travel were uneventful: long stretches of Pandora Disney interrupted by longer stretches of Pandora Showtunes. It strikes me that aliens landing on Earth and tuning in to Pandora Showtunes could come to the conclusion that "Wicked," "Grease" and "Glee" (volumes 1 through 716) are the only shows on this planet that feature tunes, as those are the only soundtracks in rotation.

 

Keith and I were kept entertained by the text-banter blowing up his phone from friends who were curious about how our trip is going so far, and who clearly were very bored at work. In one exchange, our friend Mark invited the kids to write limericks about their time in the car. The kids were too engrossed in a rousing round of "Defying Gravity" to indulge him, so the adults took up the challenge. I've decided to include them here, as they capture the spirit and tenor of the first two days in the car better than any prose I could write.
I contributed the first three:

Early one morning in May
We awoke: Our vacation day!
But by quarter to one,
We still weren't quite done.
Oh, also Keith lost the second set of Teardrop keys.

Three hours of Disney on Pandora
Is enough to quite thoroughly bore ya.
We did not get very far
With the CD from NPR.
And did I mention that Keith lost the second set of Teardrop keys?

When "How to Train Your Dragon" is told
By David Tennant in sexy Scottish brogue,
"Shush! I can't hear!"
Mommy yells at her dears,
So she won't miss any R's when they're rolled.

Peter B. chimed in with one of his own:

There once was a family of five,
But only two of them could drive.
The other three sat in back,
Each other did attack.
One wonders how many will survive.

Then there was this one, from Corey:

There once was a family from Lafayette
Whose children kept asking, "Are we there, yet?"
Said Amy with a grin,
As she plugged them all in,
Thank God an iPad for each we did get.

And, finally ... we here at the Long Time Gone blog are honored to have the opportunity to present a world-premiere work by noted Alaska poet Emily Wall:

There once was a guy from near Purdue
Who decided a visit to each national park was a must-do.
It's lucky he looked buffed and tan
While driving his little mini-van
Since it is the vehicular equivalent of a tu-tu.