The Drive – A Recap
Well we are back home from our trip to Homestead Florida. In short, it was a great vacation. I really didn’t think I could handle a holiday away from home and in a tropical location. Yea well I was way wrong. I have so much to say and so many pics to show that I think I will break this up over the next few days. I don’t want to overload anyone lol. So today, let’s discuss driving 900+ miles (we think) with 3 kids and a vanful of presents.
We set out Wed Dec 23 at 4am
Originally the plan was to leave at 3 but I overslept. Then getting 3 kids up and the hubs up was a wee bit challenging. But I got them moving and we headed out. We originally thought the trip would be 15 hours not including stops. Wrong, we got to Homestead at 7:00 in the evening. WITH the traffic in West Palm and Miami! But hold on, I am getting ahead of myself.
It doesn’t take long to get to SC, only about an hour to an hour and a half. Depends on traffic. And it was freezing when we left and our roads were icy. Once we got near SC though it was nice and clear. We filled up at Exit 10 cause they got the CHEAPEST gas on the entire trip, $2.37! Eventually the sun came up and traffic was light.
When we got to Georgia I was a bit more excited. It really felt like we were making progress. As a way to break up the monotony we stopped at the Georgia visitor center. The kids each got a road map and took potty breaks. They also argued over what movie to watch next. Oh yes, major tip…..borrow or rent a van with dvd player. How did my parents get by without this road trip necessity?? My kids were so amazingly well behaved due to the use of tv as a mind numbing drug for moms sanity!
We also stopped at the Florida visitor center. Kids got free cups of orange juice, maps, and checked out the Christmas Tree.
I loved their choice in ornaments.
Around the time we hit Jacksonville is when my enthusiasm waned.
I did most of the driving. A couple times the hubs took over so I could nap. But mostly it was me (and I promise I was not driving when I snapped the above picture). Jacksonville is almost 30 miles over the Florida border and hitting the border kinda thrilled me because I know it’s the last state to hit. BUT. It’s like traveling through Virginia……unbearably long with not much to look at but other cars. Somehow we got through it though. The hardest part for my hubs was when we hit West Palm. We stopped for a gas/potty break. Another tip, I highly recommend you train children to use the potty at gas breaks and time your eating breaks with your gas breaks just to minimize how many times you have to stop. Of course you always have that one evil child who purposely holds their bladder until 5 minutes after a break and no gas station or rest area in sight for 30+ miles. His name will be Alex. I think he does it just so we let him pee on a tree. ANYWHO, back to West Palm. We got our gas and ran to the bathroom and switched drivers which meant it was back to my turn. I think hubs did this on purpose. No sooner did we pull out did 50083957239570 cars suddenly appear. And when we hit Miami and had to get on US1 it got worse. Bumper to bumper traffic and we moved a foot every 5 minutes. I was actually pretty patient with it, I mean it’s Miami! But hubs bitched and it made our sitting time not so enjoyable.
We finally arrived and we all fell all over each other just to get out the car. We were met with hugs (many apologies to the family for my stinky butt hugging them) and liquor. Nothing makes all that driving better than being met with 7&7.
Our trip home was a bit more uneventful. We decided to spend the money on the toll roads and take the turnpike up to Fort Peirce. Trust me on this, if you are going to take 95 down and are going near West Palm, Miami, or further south….take the turnpike. It’s worth the money. I think we spent $10 on the tolls. We also opted to take two days to head back. We left Sat 26th around 4:30 and got just north of Jacksonville around midnight and grabbed a room. It helped ALOT!
Next blog post will be some random pictures about what we did. But not Christmas Day. That is a whole post in itself.
