The car ride was really much better than I expected. Leaving in the evening (really almost 6pm by the time we were on the road…6:01pm when we got on rte25) was definitely the way to go. We drove down 95 through Connecticut and New York and were over the George Washington Bridge by 10pm. We were down onto the Jersey Turnpike and stopped at the second service area and filled up the tank and switched drivers. This was the cheapest gas of the trip at 3:10 a gallon.Crystal took her first turn driving from about 10:30ish and went straight on to the Maryland/Delaware House rest area past Baltimore at about 1:30am. She needed some rest, and I had slept just a little bit while she drove. I took the wheel again and took us from there until about 4:30am through Virginia. Crystal was back on the wheel and made up a bunch of time as we cooked through southern VA and North Carolina.
We stopped at South of the Border for a small break at about 6:15am and took a few pics. The kids were really just waking up from a restless night at this point. All three were good, Amanda and Justin had decent periods of sleep and Jenn too with only occasional outbursts. Really they were all as good as we could have hoped.
The South bound Odyssey continued through the morning and day on Thursday as we reeled in Savannah, then Jacksonville. We were into Florida and still jamming as Crystal and I continued to take turns and nap and the day was getting hot.
We stopped just south of Jacksonville and kept missing coffee places and got word that we may be in for traffic around Orlando on rte 4. Off we went determined (at least I was) to make it to the condo before the 24 hour mark.
We made it through Orlando without any traffic, but the north/east bound side was pretty backed up, and continued to Tampa with the GPS on. We hit 75 and went south to Sarasota. Peter called to check on our progress and tell us we were close and he would stop by to check on us.
We arrived at the Tippecanoe condos at 5:25pm, finding it with no problem….thanks to our friend the Garmin
We arrived and were in the pool within 45 minutes. The pool is a short walk to the clubhouse and was nice and warm. In fact the water was so warm it was well above the air temperature which made getting out chilly. Jennifer loved it and spent almost all of her time in the water with Amanda, who led the charge to the pool. As soon as I was in she was working with Justin on swimming without his floaties… which he wasn’t too keen on, but it was fun anyway. The pool was good and is sure to see lots of us in the coming week. It was also just the thing to get some of that pent-up energy from the car out for both kids and Mom and Dad. It had been a long time (longer than usual) since I’d swam in a pool like that. Maybe its just been a long winter.
