I’m in a hotel room in Meridian, Mississippi, waiting for Gewel and Amelia to wake up so we can continue our slow scroll across America. When traveling with a young child and a geriatric dog, one is lucky to derive four hours of driving time a day. After three days on the road we are all of six hundred miles from Austin, and that’s not even surprising.

Today we’ll go to Johnson City, Tennessee, which is only seven hours of driving from here. I expect this to take at least twelve hours and we’ll stop at least six times.

I’m not complaining, though. I’ve always hated road trips with a hectic pace, and taking Amelia for frequent sight-seeing expeditions to see a historic plaque or a pond with an unusual number of ducks in it. That’s exactly how I want to spend my day, to be honest.