All Aboard!

The twelve of us arranged to meet in the South end of town and condense 6 vehicles to 2 cars and 1 pickup that seats 4 adults. OK...two of those adults have to be rather short stature but fortunately Sid and Debi fit that bill and in fact they were body doubles for the Munchkins in The Wizard Of Oz. Of course we had more luggage than would fit easily into the cars and the pickup bed was designated as the "over flow luggage area". You can never have too many shoes, right Chris? John brought trash bags to put the luggage in (in case it rained) and huge sheets of plastic to cover the bed of the truck and of course...what else?? DUCT TAPE! We looked like a genuine redneck parade going down Hwy 17 with plastic and duct tape flapping in the breeze. It was a proud proud moment for all of us. I have been the one who put this little excursion together so guess who was over 30 minutes late? Yep, that would be me. HEY! I had to stop and pickup my dry cleaning which led to another drama as I had asked them to fold my clothes and my plan was to s l i d e my clothes ever so gently into my suitcase. Well...ppphhhhuuu. They had put my clothes in boxes and not only could I not get the boxes open to retrieve my clothes, my luggage was at the bottom of the pile so I tossed the boxes in the back and we took off for Charleston. About halfway to Charleston it dawned on us that we would be entering a military ship yard and would need to present our passports and cruise tickets. I had my passport but unfortunately it was in the side pocket of my buried suitcase. Chris had all 4 passports for her family but her other three family members were in another car. We stop at the first gate and of course I have to dig my suitcase out from the bottom of the pile, Chris is running down the line of traffic looking for her family to give them their passports, people are honking and yelling at us and TommyB and Brian just pretended not to know who we were. We finally get through security, all three vehicles in the covered parking garage and the unloading begins. I swear we look like the Clampitt's....what a crew! Our cabins are on the same floor as the casino and when we booked this trip being close to the casino seemed like a great idea. One of these days I will learn that it is much more efficient for me to take my "allotted" gambling money and flush it down the toilet on the first day. That way the outcome is the same and I don't have to worry about it the rest of the trip. It is a beautiful night and we are all meeting up on the sun deck and check out the hot tubs. Tough life.