Hello! We are back and I am ready to share our trip with everyone!
Who:
Me (Amy), my husband Brian, Owen (14), Lily (17), and Logan (19) (And it appears that I am now the shortest in the family!!)
Why: We were celebrating Logan's high school graduation (which happened to be last year, but as most of you already know, our cruise was cancelled last summer)
Where: Port Canaveral, Miami, The Dream, and Animal Kingdom Lodge
When: June 12-23, 2022
Our goal was to leave the house by 1 or 1:30am on Sunday, June 12. My alarm went off at midnight and Brian and I quickly showered and rounded up the kids who never went to bed. We quickly loaded the car and were pulling out of the McDonald's parking lot with 2 large Cokes at 1:20! I always start the drive as I don't sleep well in the car and Brian does, so he sleeps a little longer initially so he can then take over. It was raining when we left and quickly turned into a downpour. Cincinnati is a huge obstacle course of orange cones, lane closures, and lane shifts which is difficult to navigate at the best of times, but was horrendous in the pitch black with the pouring rain! Brian checked the satellite and assured me that it would stop once we got into Kentucky. I was never so happy to see the Brent Spence bridge...only to met by even harder rain in Covington! Brian said, "whoops! I guess it followed us!" He got a not very nice look from me! Luckily, it did stop raining shortly and I got us all the way through Kentucky and into Tennessee. I was still feeling awake enough to keep driving, so I got us to Knoxville and navigated our new route onto 40 to start heading east. Brian then took over and I got a few pics along the way since it was more scenic than our normal trip straight down 75.
You'll have to pardon the bug guts on our windshield! We couldn't keep up with keeping the windshield clean!
We went through several tunnels.
The reason they are called the Great Smoky Mountains:
We saw quite a few hot air balloons at one point.
We eventually hit 26 and then 95. I wouldn't say the traffic was necessarily any better than 75, but Brian was happy to not have to drive through Atlanta and it was much more scenic!
We finally saw this at about 1:30pm:
We had stopped shortly before that, so no one wanted to stop at the Welcome Center for me!
We finally were able to experience Buc-ee's for ourselves! It was quite an experience and almost overwhelming!
We pulled into our hotel in Port Canaveral about 4:30pm.
We stayed in the Home2Suites side. It was odd to have 2 different hotels under the same roof since they shared the pool and had the same breakfast offerings.
We unloaded the car and debated what we would have for dinner. Some of us wanted pizza and some wanted seafood. The pizza people won out since there was a pizza place right across the street.
We should have had seafood!!
Who:
Me (Amy), my husband Brian, Owen (14), Lily (17), and Logan (19) (And it appears that I am now the shortest in the family!!)
Why: We were celebrating Logan's high school graduation (which happened to be last year, but as most of you already know, our cruise was cancelled last summer)
Where: Port Canaveral, Miami, The Dream, and Animal Kingdom Lodge
When: June 12-23, 2022
Our goal was to leave the house by 1 or 1:30am on Sunday, June 12. My alarm went off at midnight and Brian and I quickly showered and rounded up the kids who never went to bed. We quickly loaded the car and were pulling out of the McDonald's parking lot with 2 large Cokes at 1:20! I always start the drive as I don't sleep well in the car and Brian does, so he sleeps a little longer initially so he can then take over. It was raining when we left and quickly turned into a downpour. Cincinnati is a huge obstacle course of orange cones, lane closures, and lane shifts which is difficult to navigate at the best of times, but was horrendous in the pitch black with the pouring rain! Brian checked the satellite and assured me that it would stop once we got into Kentucky. I was never so happy to see the Brent Spence bridge...only to met by even harder rain in Covington! Brian said, "whoops! I guess it followed us!" He got a not very nice look from me! Luckily, it did stop raining shortly and I got us all the way through Kentucky and into Tennessee. I was still feeling awake enough to keep driving, so I got us to Knoxville and navigated our new route onto 40 to start heading east. Brian then took over and I got a few pics along the way since it was more scenic than our normal trip straight down 75.
You'll have to pardon the bug guts on our windshield! We couldn't keep up with keeping the windshield clean!
We went through several tunnels.
The reason they are called the Great Smoky Mountains:
We saw quite a few hot air balloons at one point.
We eventually hit 26 and then 95. I wouldn't say the traffic was necessarily any better than 75, but Brian was happy to not have to drive through Atlanta and it was much more scenic!
We finally saw this at about 1:30pm:
We had stopped shortly before that, so no one wanted to stop at the Welcome Center for me!
We finally were able to experience Buc-ee's for ourselves! It was quite an experience and almost overwhelming!
We pulled into our hotel in Port Canaveral about 4:30pm.
We stayed in the Home2Suites side. It was odd to have 2 different hotels under the same roof since they shared the pool and had the same breakfast offerings.
We unloaded the car and debated what we would have for dinner. Some of us wanted pizza and some wanted seafood. The pizza people won out since there was a pizza place right across the street.
We should have had seafood!!
Stranger things have happened! 
