Road Trip to J'ville

Friday, after the Harper drama, Ben and I packed up and FINALLY made our way out of town for our road trip to Jacksonville. 3 of Ben's best friends/pledge brothers/groomsmen are from Jacksonville, FL and live there now... The Florida/Georgia game is played there every year and they have made it a tradition to get together for the weekend. Ben went 2 years ago without me, but this time I was invited and joined the boys!!!

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We were mistakenly under the impression that it was a 5 hour drive from our house... 7 hours later we realized that we were mistaken!!! Now 1 hour of that we were in stand still traffic due to an accident ahead of us o n the interstate, and we had to stop for dinner and gas, so the trip SHOULD have taken us around 6 hours... we'll remember that next time! Around 12:30 AM we finally got to Register's house and after visiting for a while I think I hit the hay around 2:30 AM.

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That wasn't a very good thing, because we had to be up at 7AM to get ready and be picked up at 7:45 to head downtown to tailgate before the game. We loaded 11 people into Register's truck and headed to find a tailgating place downtown.

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We found a nice spot under this huge cylinder thingy which we were assured didn't have gasoline or any other explosive gases in. And yes, we even rented our own port-a-potty for the day and roped it off and put up signs so that no one else would ruin our personal clean potty for the day! haha!

Anyway, we were set up with a grill and plenty of food. Breakfast: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and mimosas (YES WHILE TAILGATING!). Lunch: hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, dips, and more drinks! I felt like all we did all day was EAT!

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Register, Hieb, and Ben

we finally headed to the game around 3 at the stadium that the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team usually plays in... it was VERY big but had a beautiful view!

We got to see the jets fly over!

And we had perfect seats on the 50 yard line, in the upper deck, on the Georgia side with Register and Gracie. I had to inform the Florida fan sitting next to me that I wouldn't be jumping up and down or cheering too much because I was an Auburn fan and didn't really care who won that game. I think he liked that better than me being a Georgia fan so it was all good.

the game was alot of fun and very weird since I didn't care either way... instead I checked espn.com regularly on my blackberry and was disappointed to watch Auburn losing losing and lose. I still love my Auburn tigers, but I've officially given up on really caring this year... we've always got next year! :)

The city of Jacksonville really is very pretty. The river is a gorgeous setting through downtown (see the blue/purple lit up bridge on the left?) and the Fair was in town so it was all lit up and lively all night!

We met up with the rest of Ben's pledge brothers, Brent and Swift, their girls, and headed for a SUSHI dinner (as though we hadn't eaten enough already). It was quite possibly the best Sushi I had ever eaten and I was officially stuffed by the end of the night. Ben and the rest of the boys' night ended with 2 rounds of SAKE BOMBS... as seen below.

We had a great time visiting with friends and enjoying the game and tailgating! We made the trek back home on Sunday, very tired but atleast had ONE extra hour of sleep after the time change! A trip to the grocery store later we were in bed early and very glad to be home!!! Thanks J'ville friends for a wonderful weekend!!!

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