The Drive, Part 1

Wheee! I love traveling. There's so much interesting stuff to see, people to meet, places to experience. Although our first couple of days of travel were only meant to get us to Michigan, it was still a fabulous adventure!
Day 1: We left NC around noon with a loaded-down car that was, quite frankly, a bit of a mess. We did really good about packing in advance, but down-to-the-wire stuff had us a bit flustered and lots of random items, even food, got thrown in helter-skelter toward the end. We were just so happy to get on the road, we figured we'd deal with it all later. Our goal was to get to Kanawha State Forest in West Virginia, where we intended on camping for the night. Our GPS, however, had other ideas. The stupid thing... Russell took all the time and effort to program it for each stop on the trip, but for some reason it threw out all the actual addresses. So we told it to take us to the state forest campground, but instead it took us to the town of Kanawha's center. Unfortunately, the town of Kanawha is a couple hours down the road from the state forest. Fortunately it is at least on the right route - so we overshot, but at least we didn't go out of our way.
Once we realized our mistake, we stopped and asked some locals about nearby camping. Since we were in West Virginia, close to the Ohio border, there was plenty to be had. We managed to tool up the road just a bit more and found a spot at Mountwood Park (ha ha, that's what she said!)
We have a great story, told to us by the camp superintendent, Ruthie, that I will have to relate when I have more time; stay tuned, it's a good one!
We got settled much later than we intended, but we had just enough light left to pitch the tent and make dinner.
It was a beautiful night, only somewhat sullied by the drunken rednecks next camp over (more on that later, too). I didn't get much sleep, but we still woke up with the sun and got a good start the next day.
Day 2: We woke up around 8, and I started in on the car. I pulled everything out of it (repack #5?), organized some of the loose stuff that we threw in last-minute, and repacked the whole car. It didn't save us too much space, but it did feel better having things more accessible or at least not a jumbled pile of miscellaneous items. We ate breakfast, made some sandwiches for the road, took showers, and got back on the highway.
We made good time the first part of the day, driving through some beautiful country. The best part of the route from NC to Ann Arbor, MI, is that it's mostly rural; no big cities or bad traffic, just lots of lush green and rolling mountains. We stopped a few times for Orion's sake, but mostly made good time and arrived in Ann Arbor without a hitch.
We met our couch surfing host, Missy, who lives walking distance from the hip university area of Ann Arbor. We got settled and then went for a stroll in the downtown area, checking out a few shops before we grabbed dinner at the Arbor Brewery. That place has great food (mmm, goat cheese and apple salad with golden raisins? yes, please!), and we got to enjoy the wonderful Michigan weather by sitting in their sidewalk section.
We even managed to meet up with Myke & Beth, who are also headed into Electric Forest today! Speaking of which, I need to get my boys up and going so we can head to the festival grounds in Rothbury - about 3 hours out from where we are now!
We'll be out of touch until Monday or Tuesday - look for more posts, and more pictures, then!