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Last year we drove to Cleveland for Thanksgiving. This year, we’re drove to Richmond, Virginia to spend the holiday with the other side of the family.

We left home on Tuesday morning, took I-4 over through Orlando and then headed north on I-95 … all the way to Virginia. Our original plans were to stop for the night in the Fayetteville, NC area but we were making such good time we decided to drive straight through.

1:30pm Georgia border
3:30pm South Carolina border
6:30pm North Carolina border
9:30pm Virginia border
10:30pm arrived at Richmond, VA, ~864 miles

We spent Wednesday learning the local area (and lingo, like RVA), and spent some timing shopping in Carytown (my daughter particularly enjoyed Chop Suey bookstore).

On Thursday we had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with family: my brother-in-law cooked up Alton Brown’s roast turkey recipe (which was fantastic), and there were mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, green been casserole, cranberry sauce, homemade bread, salad, etc. And of course there was football and watching our Dayton Flyers men’s basketball team play in the Advocare Invitational.

On Friday we avoided all Black Friday shopping and instead had a nice lunch outside by the river at Legend Brewing and that evening went to see the holiday lights display at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. We got home in time to watch the Flyers beat Monmouth in the second round of the basketball tournament.

Saturday morning, it was time to bid farewell to family and start driving back home. We made a short detour over to Colonial Williamsburg to check out the holiday decorations and grab a quick lunch at the Cheese Shop. Rather than retrace our steps west on I-64 back to Richmond to catch I-95 South, we took the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry across the James River and then took the back country roads to the interstate. We stopped briefly across the South Carolina border at South of the Border (or SoB), just to check another place off our Roadside America list.

Originally our plans had called for us to get all the way to Jacksonville, but we called an audible, cancelled the hotel in Jacksonville, and made a reservation outside of Savannah instead. We put in a takeout order for dinner from Mellow Mushroom in Pooler and then drove the last 10 minutes to our hotel where we checked in the evening.

9:30am on the road
10:30am Williamsburg, Cheese Shop
1:00pm Jamestown Ferry
2:30pm back on I-95
3:00pm North Carolina border
6:00pm South of the Border
9:00pm picked up pizza
9:20pm checked into hotel

Early Sunday morning we were back on the road. After getting around Jacksonville, we took US 301 south to avoid I-75 (and the Thanksgiving crowds) for as long as possible. We merged back onto the interstate around Ocala and found ourselves in heavy traffic, but not as bad as last year. We still made it home in time to unpack and watch the Flyers get crushed by Xavier in the Advocare Invitational finals. 🙁

8:00am on the road
9:20am Florida border
11:20am back on I-75 in Ocala, off of US 301
2:15pm home!

It was a 1,783 mile round trip, but another Thanksgiving road trip is history!