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White Sand to the Bayou Summer Roadtrip 2018 - Day 7... Panama City Beach, FL to Apopka, FL

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1,850.7 miles
36 hours and 28 minutes spent in the car
5 hotels
4 states
2 happy kids
1 exhausted family
Countless memories

... And our road trip from Florida to Louisiana and back again is over. We had such a great time!

When we asked everyone what their favorite thing we did was we got these answers:
Kenzie - Staying in all the hotels and seeing the Blue Angels
Will - Eating beignets
Kristen - Seeing the Blue Angels
Steven - Visiting New Orleans because it is somewhere he has never been before

This morning we were up early (as usual) and we packed up and loaded the car before breakfast. It's probably good this was our last night or the kids may have started revolting when we tried to make them eat out. Especially breakfast. They definitely slowed on how much they ate as the week went on. We were on the road by about 8:00 Central time. We knew we would switch back to the Eastern time zone and the drive was 5 hours so we wanted to get on the road. They kids rode for a long time playing games with each other and coloring. Eventually we stopped to use the bathroom and get a drink. We didn't turn the movie on yet because we knew we wanted to eat soon. We switched into the Eastern time zone before lunch but wanted to get back on our normal time so we had to eat early-ish for us.




There were minimal options for stopping so we eventually decided to just grab McDonalds whenever we found one. We also decided to grab lunch and go. Eating on the road on the way back definitely worked for us so we could get more miles under our belt. We set up Toy Story for the kids and they ate lunch and watched the movie for a while. Will fell asleep during the movie and when it ended we didn't put anything in right away.




Kenzie announced she needed to use the bathroom so we stopped. Will woke up and said he had to potty but apparently didn't wake up all the way. He spent the next 10 minutes crying hysterically with me in the bathroom because he couldn't decide if he wanted to potty or not. He was still half asleep. Eventually I made him get in the car and we continued on down the road. He screamed and cried for about 25 miles before finally settling down some and watching Up with Kenzie. He has never really woken up from naps well unless he wakes up on his own free will. Oh well. The rest of the drive was basically just us driving through patches of traffic that were backed up because it had rained. It never really rained on us but it apparently rained earlier and slowed traffic that we were still dealing with. When we made the turn onto 429, the cloud coverage closer to our house was dark! Typical Florida rain clouds. We made it all the way home and right as we were getting ready to pull into the house, the downpours started. So we had to unload the car in the rain. Then we had to switch the rental car with mine in the garage so we could vacuum it. Yeah, that's right. We vacuumed it. The kids made a big mess in the back and we didn't want to chance a cleaning fee so we took a few extra minutes to make sure it was okay. I think we may be the only people that vacuum a rental car before we return it.


Steven took the car back to the airport while I unpacked. I did it in record time while the kids played in their rooms. They were so happy to be home. We just have a ton of laundry to get done. Then we left to pick up Steven at the airport. The rain was so terrible that it took about 15 minutes extra to get there.


We have now had spaghetti for dinner (though I used frozen meatballs to save time) and are getting ready for bed soon. I think the adults may fall into bed almost as quickly as the kids do tonight. It was a long and tiring week but we wouldn't trade a second of it. We learned quite a bit traveling with two young kids and I have a post planned with things we learned and tricks that may work for others (as well as to remind us in a year of things that worked or didn't when we plan to do this all over again). That is going to come later this week more than likely though because I am just too tired tonight.

Day 7 (and the White Sand to the Bayou Summer Roadtrip 2018) - Done!

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