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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1668117" data-attributes="member: 2205">The Great Dyal Vacation of 2004 Trip Journal Entry #4: July 5thDay 4, Monday July 5th was one of those "drive all day" days.  We took I-20 east from Dallas and on into Louisianna.  We were a little confused at first, because our Mapquest directions had us taking US-49 south to I-10, but I didn't see US-49, I saw I-49.  It turns out I needed to look at the next state over; we went all the way to Jackson before turning south.  We debated taking I-49 anyway, but decided we had seen plenty of I-10 in the past and would again coming back to pick up the kids from Grandma and Grandpa, so we could stay on I-20 all the way to Jackson Mississippi.  I'm not sure that we saw anything notable having done that, though -- but at least we saw different trees than the I-10 trees along the side of the road.  It's always a really green drive from East Texas to Florida, with trees almost right to the side of the Interstate, and quite often in the median as well.Julie got a ticket going through Louisianna; 83 in a 70.  Ouch!  That's her second ticket in that state (making the same drive last time too).  State troopers in Louisianna, at least based on our two experiences with them, are abnormally rude and brusque for some reason.  We had planned to be careful in Louisianna, and her cruise was only set at 75.  I think she got some particularly bad luck, though; the cop was hiding out behind a thick stand of trees, and she happened to be passing someone so she was going faster at that moment than she actually had been driving all morning.But we got over that soon enough; we still had plenty of drive left.  In the morning I read some of Bernard Cornwell's Enemy of God, the second in his historical fiction King Arthur series (which I've read before, incidentally), and then we swapped and Julie slept for a while while I listened to Dvorzak's New World Symphony and some Franz Liszt (Preludes and Hungarian Dances) which as it turns out, was the only CD in the car.  Later we had a little bit more fun finding radio stations that would last for more than fifteen minutes or so.It was amazing to both of us how many 80s stations there are.  When the heck did the 80s become so popular?  We couldn't hit seek more than once or twice without hearing vintage Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, or some other scion of the decade of my teenage years.  Which, frankly, is just fine with me, I might point out.  I'm a bit notorious for my taste in music.I did hear a song that wasn't announced, and I don't know what it is yet, though.  Not an 80s song (although it would have fit in that decade) but a dance song with pretty good vocals -- I didn't get the artist or the song title, so I've been struggle to reproduce the song based on a fairly sketchy memory of a line in the chorus that had something to do with I thought you had a boyfriend, or maybe it was a girlfriend or something like that.If that song rings a bell, anyone, please hollar!  My usual habit of putting those words in a google search hasn't turned up anything yet.We didn't hear this, though, until after we had driven for a ridiculously long time through the Florida panhandle and finally turned south on I-75 for the last leg into Orlando.  We didn't see an accident actually happen, but we did see a semi that had rolled over onto its side while trying to take a tightly curled entrance ramp too fast.  By the time we passed it, two state troopers were already closing off the ramp, but we just drove right by on the freeway.The last little bit of the drive is always fun; when you turn off I-75 onto the tollway, you've been on the road so long you feel like your butt and your chair have become some kind of strange symbiotic co-organism, but Orlando's always a fun place, so you start to get a bit excited in spite of yourself.We actually didn't stay in Orlando this time; Julie had found a hotel in lovely scenic Kissimmee for $35/night or something ridiculously cheap like that.  Kissimmee, of course, is neither lovely nor scenic, being a brothel of cheap tourist fare.  The hotel was pretty skanky as well, we found out, and our second night there the AC was dead, so we had to move rooms.Still, we were only there to sleep, which we did anticipating an early morning on Tuesday at the doors of Universal Studios.</blockquote>

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