Vacation Day 9: The drive home.....

The plan for yesterday was to drive to the same place in Georgia that we camped on the way down (about half-way), camp for the night and then finish driving home today. We got up, had breakfast and then packed everything up to hit the road. We ran into some traffic going through Orlando (seems like that place ALWAYS has a lot of traffic) but other than that, getting out of Florida went pretty well. We made sure to stop at rest areas to stretch / run the boys and hit the bathrooms. That worked great and I don't remember a potty emergency. The boys were super great travelers. The trip home was rolling along until we hit Georgia. We got to our exit for the campground about 3pm and decided to push on home - it had only taken up about 7 hours to get to that point so we thought "Hey, we'll be home by 10pm. Sounds great - let's keep going!". Oh what a bad decision that was. Literally just a few miles past the campground exit, traffic came to a stop. And barely rolled along for a LONG time. We saw on an exit that there was a fort so we hopped off to do something fun with the boys. It ended up being 10 miles off the road but Fort McAllister was a God-send to let the boys play. We had to bundle up because the air and wind off the water was chilly, not like the warm temps we had left behind in Florida. We played for a while and then decided to find something to eat. We ended up at Golden Corral and boy was it perfect. We were all so hungry - steaks for me and Tim, chicken fingers for the boys. After that, we went off-Interstate and I navigated through some serious back roads. As in, barely any signs of civilization. We stayed out there as long as I could handle (I was nervous about running out of gas, something happening and no one being able to find us - irrational but that was me!) and then we made our way back to I95. It ended up being a great detour and we much prefer a longer route moving that just sitting in traffic. We stopped in SC to fuel up and then boogie for home. It was about 9 or 10pm and Eli & I had a breakdown moment. The boys were so good but at this moment, while Tim was pumping gas, he had tears in his eyes when he said he just wanted to be home. I told him that I did too and I was sorry for not stopping. The boys shortly fell asleep and Tim & I were bound to get home. We made it back to our county, could almost smell home and then....had to stop for gas again! We didn't want to but after we filled up, we knew we could have run out on the highway. We pulled in the driveway about 2am - 17 hours after we started the drive. Granted it wasn't 17 hours continuous but it sure was a long day! We pulled in the driveway, grabbed the boys and hit our beds. Today, it was definitely worth it to wake up in our own beds and not have a 5+ hour drive to get home but boy it was a long day. It was also great to catch up on laundry and de-vacation everything.

So to sum up our 1st ever family vacation - AWESOME!! 1682 miles and a lot of fun and memories. The camper was great, camping in it was great. The boys behaved so well and had a blast. We loved seeing our family, having daily adventures and just hanging out. Eli & Cole seemed to love camping life and it was just a great time. I wouldn't change a thing (even the long drive yesterday because even though it was tough, it worked out perfectly for today). So glad we went and we will definitely do it again!!