we got to raleigh, nc at about 1:30am. at this point we'd been up for like 20 hours. we were staying at my friend jessi's house who i love so much!!!!!!!!!! we met when jon and her boyfriend at the time were in bootcamp and we've keep in touch ever since. she has visited us a few times because she is a flight attendant and can do things like that. i'd never been out to see her, so we planned our trip so that we could stop at her place. when we got there, she had a pilot friend sleeping on the couch and one in her room and had a blow up bed for us on the floor. by the time the pilots left at 6am, jon and i were sleeping on the hard ground with no air left in the mattress. i quickly got into bed with jessi while jon slept on the couch.
i know these are horrible out-the-window pictures, but raleigh is so cute!! who knew???? also, how dare you have such green grass in the dead of winter!!
as you can see, we went to the flying biscuit cafe in the morning. i love being with jessi, she has such a positive outlook on life and she is theeee funniest! she is not lds and she grew up in nauvoo, a mormon town. she very kindly told us that we are her favorite mormon couple (eye roll). she followed up by saying, "no, i know a lot of mormon couples! i see them every once in awhile. when they ask me how i'm doing i say "good. still drinkin' and swearin'."" my goodness does that woman have a mouth on her, but it makes her that much funnier. i really did not want to say goodbye to her, but we had a long day ahead of us...
here she blows!!! isn't it so cute!!! we stopped to get gas at this teeny tiny gas station where everyone knew each other but us. this is when i started to drive for the first time. it is such a smooth ride and gets up to 83 miles per hour quick! so quick that i didn't even see that cop with his radar! needless to say, that 45 minutes was the only time i drove the whole road trip and yeah. i do have a north carolina speeding ticket i still need to pay off.
our friend aaron is from asheville, NC so we decided to stop in and see his stomping grounds! it reminded me a lot of park city, ut with all the cute little shops and sub zero temperatures. he was so excited to see pictures we sent him. it was fun but would have been much better if he and ashton were there to show us around. we got four little meatballs from the mellow mushroom. (turns out we have one of these in san antonio too!)
our next stop was the tomato head in knoxville, tn!!!!!! i can not explain to you how cold it was here. it was very difficult for me to pull my pants down (tmi?) to use the restroom and this is why:
ice. along the walls and floor in the bathroom.
knoxville was really cute, i'm glad we stopped there for a couple hours. the square was dead because the weather was so bad. while we were driving, we were getting text messages from family asking how we were doing because that part of the nation was experiencing arctic chills. there were signs all over telling people to stop driving and stay inside. luckily, all was well for us although we were very, very cold.
next stop, nashville!!
