First Road Trip

We went on our first road trip this past week. We spent 11 hours each way driving to Pensicola, Florida. I read blog posts and tried to prepare myself for anything we would need. The kids are not fans of the car and don't normally do great for a 30 minute drive, so I was worried. Surprisingly, they did really well. We had few outbursts and everyone stayed pretty content most of the way. 

We left Texas at 7am. I wanted to leave when the kids were already well rested. I knew there was a good chance Emmy wouldn't sleep at all, so I wasn't going to wake her up for all of us to endure "no sleep Emmy" all confined in a small space for hours and hours. Once she woke up, we hit the road! We were all excited to be heading to the beach! 

I found some good road trip ideas on various blogs. We had fun playing I Spy, doing workbooks/coloring books, making foil and pipe cleaner sculptures, and coloring on the windows. They enjoyed playing it all, but the biggest hit was the iPad. We connected it to our phone hotspot and the car Bluetooth to have a nice Netflix set up. My speakers were hijacked, but well worth it for happy travelers! 

There was no shortage of very long, very high bridges(all over water) to drive over. 

We drove over one bridge in Lousiana for what felt like hours. We decided to google it and found out we were driving on the second longest bridge in America!  The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is 18.2 miles long and all over water! The whole time I could only think about the bridge collapsing and falling in to the mouth of a crocodile. 

And experiences like that are why driving is clearly better than flying. : ) 

We decided to stop and eat at Chilis on the way there to let the kids get out of the car for a bit, and boy was that a mistake! These pictures are deceiving...hahaha

After being there 45 minutes, we finally got our cold food. Needless to say, we left without eating and had one very grumpy traveler( hint- it wasn't me or the kids). O did I mention I may have also accidentally spilt water on the Mr while trying to help with a misbehaving kindergartener? The only smiling was for a brief moment in those pictures. Haha! 

We had a lot of snacks packed so we ate those and headed to Biloxi, Mississippi. We broke the trip up on the drive there and stopped for the night in Biloxi. 

We woke up the next morning bright and early for the 2 hour drive to Pensicola. After eating lunch we went straight to the beach! 

The drive home was less eventful. We made the trip straight home in about 11 hours. Everyone (okay maybe just me) was too tired for games so we broke every screen time rule in the book and watched Netflix most of the way. 

Overall, the first road trip was a success. I may actually do it again!