Five and a Half Hours Is The New Eight
We decided to take our first vacation in over 4 years. We wanted to go back to the beach. We went when Alan was one year old, and have not been back since. He just turned five.
Since we were all packed up the night before, it was a surprise to us that it took us an hour and a half more than we thought to get on the road to our summer vacation.
That seems to be how it always goes though. It takes at least 45 minutes to pack up the car, so even though we were packed and ready, we didn't have it all in the car so it caused a delay. We finally pulled out of the garage at about 8:30 that morning, headed for Santa Rosa Beach, FL.
We found a beautiful house to rent down there and even invited our neighbors, the Robertsons, to join us. The house slept ten people, and we would end up with nine there, so it was a pretty good fit. Our kids are very different ages, so the week went surprisingly smoothly given those differences.
We expected to make it there in about six and a half hours, since it was about a five and a half hour drive, with no stops. However, we ran into considerable traffic in Mobile. We were stopped or going under five miles per hour for about 45 minutes in Mobile, AL. That did not help things.
At least bunny helped lighten the mood while we were barely moving by helping daddy drive.
After we got past that bottleneck, all was fine until we headed south off of I-10 in Florida. It was a complete traffic jam. We were in stop and go traffic, for no apparent reason. We ended up coming to a cross road and driving about 20 miles out of the way to Panama City Beach, and then driving back up to Santa Rosa Beach. I think it still saved time, based on what Google Maps was showing us.
So, a drive that we expected to take only 6.5 hours took nearly 8. That is a long time for me, let alone two fidgety toddlers.
More to come of the beach adventure...
