Met with my friend(Doris is 70 and very active) yesterday to have lunch and figured out that we will need another day on our trip to north carolina. So that makes that a 9 day trip. I will have to reschedule 4 more people into my full calendar. I am hoping that we can visit my nephew and his family in/by knoxville, TN. It is dew west of Raleigh and only about an hour out of our way. We would spend the night in town and perhaps just take them out to dinner. I already asked Nick if that would be possible, he will check with his wife, they usually plan trips with the kids on the weekends so this may or may not happen irregardless we will still have to come up with another hotel stay on the way back.
She and I are both excited about this trip. The bluegrass festival will be fun! and she gets to see her mom and family. It has been 3 years since she has seen her 90 year old mother. We will spend 3 whole days there. Kind of nervous about what I will do??? I am giving myself permission to spend the night in a hotel if I need to get away.

I have never spent more than 2 hours with Doris before. So this should be interesting. We are driving my car and she will take turns thankfully. I wanted to drive my car and not her big truck which gets poor gas mileage.
My honda fit gets 35-40 mpg on the highway.
I printed off directions to atlanta for the night, to raleigh for 2 nights, Tn one night, mississippi 4 nights then back home. Will also bring an atlas. I don't trust my GPS which we will use too. Sometimes it doesn't come on and I have to jiggle the wires. It is not that old!!!!!
We will be leaving September 27th getting back home on October 5th.

Jeffs birthday is the 27th....so I need to come up with something for him. He is going to go up to his friends for the weekend, so that will be fun for him. They have the same birthdays, and are really good friends.

bizi..I started telling her about some of my idiosyncrasies...some how have to tell her about my avoidance of showers. Now that I have 2 more pairs of pants I feel better. Will bring a sweater and raincoat/wind breaker, it will be chilly in the evenings. Bela Fleck is playing, he is a really good banjo player!
really looking forward to the festival...can't believe we are really going.
sorry this is so long...thank you reading.
bizi