The Grumpy’s are here for the final day of Teens Westward
Bound Trip 1 2017. Describing these past
23 days for each group has been hard, but we think our job is the hardest to
capture and summarize the last day we say goodbye to our new friends.
Today we woke up for the final time as a group of 82 at 6:00
am with our final “Good Morning Sunshines” from Dallas Godbold. For all vehicles this morning (and the rest
of the day) we were not to sleep and fulfill all last moments with each
other. Before making our way into
Tennessee for our final Wal-Mart stop the vans and bus jammed to many of our
favorite tunes from the trip such as “American Pie”, “Don’t Stop Believing”,
“My Wish”, “Life is a Highway”, “Lean on Me”, and “Catch and Release” (one of our
new favorites thanks to Eugene).
We made it into Tennessee for our final Wal-Mart stop for
our cooks to by us breakfast and lunch. Many
of us, with this being our last Wal-Mart stop, went ALL OUT! Griffin Law bought a sleeve of 13 doughnuts,
Tyler Sellers bought a box of 6 cinnamon rolls, Emma Parson bought a 2-liter of
Dr. Pepper, Logan Swain and Kenley Hazel bought their second pint of Ben &
Jerry’s on the trip, Jada Prichard bought both an entire hoagie and a
pineapple, Mary Helen Alford bought four red velvet cupcakes, and numerous
people bought muffins (keep in mind, this is all before our breakfast). For a change for a traveling breakfast, we
had a choice of “Colossal Crunch Berry”,
“Tutti Frutti”, and “Cinnamon Toasties” with milk and to reduce spills, we used
Styrofoam cups.
As we continued on our travels, getting closer and closer to
home, both the bus and vans had some bittersweet moments. On the bus many people were passing around
journals as if they were yearbooks at the end of a school year, while the vans
were listening to many of our favorite TWB tunes as we crossed the
Tennessee/North Carolina border. Shortly
after crossing into North Carolina we stopped at a rest area for us all to
relieve ourselves (by day 23, the girls have finally figured out how to make
the line move faster). These last few
hours are bittersweet, as we all continue to say our goodbyes, listen to our
favorite tunes, nap on each other (shhh…don’t tell the counselors), and share
our last peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
We are now at our last rest stop in Troutman for our groups
to finish our final jobs before pick-up at Mallard Creek. Dopey’s are doing their final bus cleaning
and your very own Grumpy’s are writing the final blog. This time at the rest stop is bittersweet; we
may not miss these rest stops across America, but we will miss the people we
stopped at them with.
This is the Grumpy’s for the final signoff. We promise we aren’t grumpy; we just have
mixed feelings about the next 4 hours.
