starting the trip home

 Back to reality and the cruise line made it clear that reality was coming the night before we left and the morning of disembarkation.  The night before, while we were at dinner and seeing the last show on the ship (which was great and made up for the horrible Motown one) our room steward turned down 

 the bed, cleaned up and took all of our hangers that we brought with us.  So, now we had hanging clothes that couldn’t be put in the hanging bag unless we stole the cruise lines’ wooden hangers.  We called down to passenger services and they said that they would get us some, but we needed to go to bed and no one came.  After taking some pictures of a cruise ship that we were passing in the night, we got in bed and tried to sleep for our early wake up.  Up and at ‘em early and the 

room steward says to take the wooden hangers?!?!?!?  We get some breakfast and get ready with all of our bags and make it to our rendezvous point at the appointed time and the US has not given the ship clearance yet.  So, we wait and Princess does a horrible job of planning this disembarkation because the groups after us are now coming in and getting in front of us who are supposed to be the early departures.  We finally get to depart, lug everything (I think that John as a pack mule finally convinced him that we need a new set of luggage) to customs where they give only a cursory look at our customs form, we were let loose on US soil.  The parking lot sent their van and we got in the car and started driving at a hard pace in order to make South Georgia by nightfall.  We stopped for lunch in Daytona Beach and could hear the cars on the speedway from the Chick-fil-a.  We got to drive past and take a couple of pictures that you see from the interstate practically.  We made good time and got to John’s great aunt’s house by dinner time.  I got to help with some preparations for the supper that would be on offer after the funeral and forgot how real southern cooking is done.  I no longer have a container on the stove reserved for fat that gets poured off and kept for the next batch of peas and collard greens.  Between turkey, bar-b-que, fried chicken with every fixin you can imagine, we could feed an army and this doesn’t count what others are going to bring.  An exhausted sleep comes easily on this night.