Time for our annual family vacation to Walt Disney World over the Labor Day Weekend! With school starting early this year (back on August 10th) it seemed like we had to wait a lot longer for our end-of-summer trip.
This year our vacation was threatened by Hurricane Hermine which passed through our area yesterday and today. School was cancelled both days and I ended working from home yesterday and taking today off. We had a lot of wind and rain, but luckily nothing too bad in our immediate neighborhood. Once we received word that the Friday night high school football games were also cancelled, we decided to head over to Orlando early, hopeful that Hermine would cross the state quickly and leave the rest of the weekend alone.
For Father’s Day I got an Amazon Echo, Amazon’s voice-activated smart home speaker. You may know it (her?) as Alexa. If you’ve followed the blog, or even just glanced at it, you know I love tech gadgets and am also no stranger to dabbling in home automation so the Echo has been a fun toy to play with so far.
It was a long week (4 days of travel, 3 days of vacation) but we’re back in warm Florida after our trip up north to Ohio for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Despite the heavy snow on Thanksgiving day, slightly warmer temperatures on Friday allowed for the roads to be clear and easy to navigate, so once again weather was not a factor in our trip. We left Cleveland around 9:00am (36 degrees!) and stopped for a late lunch with old college friends in Lebanon, Ohio (46 degrees). We ended up staying and visiting a little longer than expected so we weren’t back on the road until 3:30pm. Around 4:00pm we crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky on I-75 South. We stopped for gas and a driver change in Lexington around 5:30pm (55 degrees!) and at 7:00pm crossed the Tennessee border. We grabbed dinner at a Zoë’s Kitchen in Knoxville around 8:00pm (not bad!). Another long night of driving into Georgia and we stopped just north of Atlanta at our hotel in Kennesaw at 11:15pm.
Sunday morning we were checked out of the hotel and driving south on I-75 by 8:30am, and then stopped for a quick breakfast at Sublime Doughnuts in Atlanta. We crossed our final border into Florida at 1:00pm and stopped for lunch in Lake City about 45 minutes later (and it was now a wonderful 75 degrees). We ran into terrible traffic through Gainsville (Gator fans driving home?) that seriously slowed us down. Instead of a three hour drive from Lake City, we didn’t get home until after 6:30pm.
Our total round trip was about 2,739 miles, 48 hours in the car, whew!
Offhand note: I learned that Touch ID on my iPhone 6 Plus doesn’t work reliably when my hands are cold and dry like they were in Ohio.
What posessed us to drive over 1,200 miles from warm, sunny Florida to Ohio around arguably one of the busiest travel times of the year? 1) It was a little last-minute; we didn’t have any big plans for Thanksgiving and had nowhere else to really be. 2) Our dog is 16 years old (17 next month!) and we don’t like leaving him in the kennel for extended periods, so we wanted to bring him with us and didn’t want to deal with last minute flights with a pet. 3) Road trip!
We actually left Florida early Monday morning (75 degrees). We crossed into Georgia on I-75 North around noon and stopped shortly thereafter for gas and food in Valdosta (now rainy and still 75 degrees). After a brief stop for my daughter at the American Girl store north of the city, the rest of Monday was just more driving until we eventually stopped in Clinton, TN for the night at 8:30pm.
Tuesday morning found us back on the road, crossing into Kentucky and making a brief stop at the Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum (yes, the first KFC). It wasn’t open, and seems to be under rennovation, but at least we got to peek in the windows and read the historical marker. The weather continued to cooperate (although it was getting chillier as we header further north) and driving was smooth: we were through Lexington around 1:15pm (after a stop for “lunch” at Graeter’s, something we can’t get at home), then Louisville about 45 minutes later. Yes, we veered west to I-65 North because we were going to go through Indianapolis to see my wife’s grandmother on our way. I-65 is where we ran into some bad construction traffic (and I witnessed a tractor trailer swerve, hitting a van, and going into the median). But by 5pm we were in Frankfort, IN (north of Indy) visiting briefly with grandma. We continued on I-69 North to Fort Wayne and then onto US-24 to cut northeast into Ohio, crossing the border around 7:45pm. We finally connected to I-80/90 and made it to our final destination at 10:30pm. It was a long day, but we made it (and by now it was under 40 degrees).
We won’t be doing a lot of sight-seeing while we’re here …mostly spending time with family and friends. Tonight, Thanksgiving, the snow is really coming down! On Saturday, we start the two day trek back home (I hope the roads are clear!).
It’s Saturday night … hard to believe tomorrow morning we leave Houston already and start the trek back home. But our Fourth of July weekend in Texas was an eventful and fun one …
We celebrated the arrival of 2013 a little differently this year … with friends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios! It was crazy crowded but definitely a unique experience.
After spending Independence Day at home with friends from out-of-town (your typical cookout, pool party, then picnic and fireworks shindig), we flew up to Cleveland for a long weekend with more family and friends.
The day started early again as we got up at 7am, grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel, and the headed out into the chilly, windy morning over to the University of Dayton Arena for rehearsal with the alumni band. Practice ended a few hours later after we rehearsed the pre-game and halftime shows with the student band on the football field Welcome Stadium.
It’s been quiet here in the Tampa Bay area just under three months into the 2011 hurricane season, but it looks like Irene might give us our first tropical storm soaking next weekend. We’ll be keeping an eye on her for sure as the week progresses.
