Hey!

Over the weekend I went on a weekend road trip to Illinois for my one of cousin’s wedding. It was my mom, my niece, my cousin Scotty, his wife, their daughter, and me. Scotty’s brother was getting married. The drive is about eighteen hours. I live in Florida and Illinois is a ways away! The drive there wasn’t too bad and seemed to go pretty quickly. I think we only had to stop a few times to get gas and some food. A lot of the family on my mom’s side lives in Illinois and it’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen most of them. Years and years!

Top left picture is Atlanta, GA at 3am. That’s when we drove through. Top right is sunrise in Kentucky. Bottom is the start of the sunrise in Tennessee. Tennessee sunrise came first and Kentucky a little while later. We drove through all three places. We started the trip at 5pm Thursday, so we drove through most of the states at night, so I couldn’t get a lot of cool pictures (especially of Tennessee) until on the way home, which I will be posting later in this post because I took so many cool mountain pictures!

Another sunset picture below from either Tennessee or Kentucky. I don’t remember exactly where I took it, but it was one of those places on the way there. I love this picture.

On Friday when we got to Illinois, we went to another cousin’s house to change clothes and then head out to my aunt’s house to visit with them for a little while. It was nice seeing them, because it’s been years since I’ve seen them.

This is a grain elevator right next to her house. It stores crops for farmers.

After hanging out there for a little bit, we decided to go to my cousin’s house that is getting married to help decorate for their wedding the next day (Saturday). He lives on a farm, so we got to check out some animals (cows, pigs, chickens, ducks). I didn’t take any pictures of the chickens or ducks, but I did get some pictures of the pigs and cows! First though, here is some of the wedding decorations that they had. My cousin built the arch, which was really neat.

Now onto all the animals! There were some baby pigs too, which they were all hiding so we couldn’t see them all. My cousin did get into the pig pen and get one out though. It was a little difficult since the mom pig was chasing him around, lol.  There were so many cows on the farm. All different sizes and colors. There were some pigs that were sharing space with some of the cows too.

This is probably my favorite picture that I took of the cows. I just really like the way that it looks. There were also tons and tons of corn and other crops on the farm as well, so I took pictures of those too.

After helping out there and taking a ton of pictures, my cousin/bestie Tammy, my mom, niece, and I went to get something to eat before heading to my brother’s house where we were staying. Tammy and I went to Walmart, so I could get some new shoes since my other ones got so muddy with all the rain/mud on the farm. I ended up not even bothering with wearing my new shoes, because I knew they would end up getting muddy too. But I had them for the ride home at least. Saturday, my mom, niece, and I got up early and dressed for the day then went to get breakfast.

Left picture is Tammy and I messing around with all the masks at Walmart. Right picture is what I wore to the wedding. I was originally not going to wear my black tights, but it was raining and cold so I ended up going into the Denny’s bathroom and putting them on. I’m glad I decided to at least carry them in my purse with me, lol! The wedding turned out nice even though it rained. I got super muddy (my shoes and some of my tights) when we went to the barn early to help setup and fix things up since the barn got a little bit of rain in it, so we had to come up with a new idea. But it turned out nice. I didn’t get a ton of pictures besides a few that I took of the ceremony for my cousin and his new wife. Below is just a picture of my niece, me, and Tammy. We decided to take a picture of our muddy shoes, lol.

On Saturday night after the wedding, I went out to eat with Tammy and her boyfriend. That was a good time. I never met her boyfriend before and he seemed pretty cool and nice. After dinner I went back to my brother’s house and went straight to sleep. Had to get up early Sunday to get ready to leave. So we went to pickup my cousin Scotty and his family and then went to say bye to everyone. After that we headed for home!

Now for all the awesome pictures I took of the mountains in Tennessee. You have to actually drive up mountains to get to where we needed to go. On the way to Illinois we went through the mountains at night, so we couldn’t really see anything. On the way home though, it was daytime, so we got to see everything. We even decided to go to Lookout Mountain and drive to the top of that. Lookout Mountain is kind of a touristy type place, because it has Ruby Falls and Rock City, but we didn’t do those tours. We just drove to the top ourselves and looked around. It’s really cool though, because it’s like it’s own little community up there. They have parks, stores, even a Starbucks (LOL), etc. I guess it’s helpful for the people that live on the mountain, so they don’t have to drive up and down it every single day. Some of the street names were neat too, like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood. Even their pharmacy was called Fairyland Pharmacy.

The next set of pictures are of some flowers that I seen around Lookout Mountain when we were walking around the mountain.

The ride home felt like forever, but I think that was just because we were all anxious to get home after being in a car for so long. All in all, the trip ended up being pretty fun and I got to take so many awesome pictures. See some cool things that I haven’t seen in years and visit with family that I haven’t seen in years. 😀

I brought with me a ton of reading material (two physical books and my Kindle filled with 100+ books downloaded), but I couldn’t focus on reading while in the car on the way there or back. It’s usually easy for me to read in the car, but for some reason not this time. I was hoping to at least read two books, but I ended up only reading 40% of one book the entire trip. Hopefully I can catch up on some reading this week. I’ll also catch up with your posts tomorrow or Friday and reply to comments.

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| August.
Book Haul|| August.

I hope you have a great day!