Disney Road Trip from Indianapolis

[rdearth]

The family (wife, 6 year old daughter, 2 year old son) took off from Indianapolis on Friday, October 12 at 1:30 pm to begin our weeklong vacation in Orlando. This was the first time for The Boy, but the third for the rest of us as a family (I've been something like 8 times total). The goal was to drive about half of the 1000 mile journey on Friday and finish up on Saturday morning.

We were a little nervous about the long ride with The Boy, but he did amazingly well as long as he had entertainment which mostly consisted of a portable DVD player (with, of course, tons of Disney movies) and an Amazon Kindle Fire.

Side note: I never quite got the appeal of such devices as a Kindle Fire, but since buying one, it's an amazing thing to have around. In fact, I'll sound like a commercial here, but when paired with the very affordable Amazon Prime (Netflix-type option), we could probably easily utilize two of the little buggers in our family of four. Anyway, back to the trip report.

From Indy, we can basically take two routes (either through Louisville or Lexington Kentucky) before hitting the loooong stretch of road through Georgia on I-75. This time we went the Louisville way, but decided to take a state road bypassing Nashville.

I've found that about 4 hours of driving at a time is about the limit for everyone and it correlates pretty well with a tank of gas. A big part of my planning is searching online before the trip for local eateries or at least fast food chains that aren't found in our area. I had found a popular place in the tiny town of Simpsonville, Kentucky (right by the Tennessee border), but once we got in the vicinity, we had trouble locating the restaurant.

Interesting though, Simpsonville is one of those places that has a center square or roundabout that takes you around the town center. When we hit that, we realized that this place we've never heard of really gets into Halloween. Pretty much all the tiny, local businesses had put out displays consisting mostly of ghoulish dummies that often made fun of their own shops--like an attorney had Frankenstein and his wife with a sign saying sometimes marriage can be hell, etc. We decided to eat at the local dive diner (that was completely empty since there was a high school football game later that night). The diner actually had a zombie dummy chef outside of it cooking up fake fingers and other body parts. Part of me thought, "Wow, that's really kind of a turn off when you're trying to find some place to eat," but another part of me thought "How cool that this town is so into Halloween AND that they can all make fun of themselves." The food was mostly on the fried variety (although homemade).

So, off we went for our midpoint stay in East Ridge, Tennessee (just outside of Chattanooga). Through Hotwire, we booked a Holiday Inn for about $80. Another commercial, but I highly recommend Hotwire for short stays, but only in connection with a website forum that can tell you within one or two options, what your selection is going to be. If you do a search for "better bidding" that's the one to use.

I primarily picked this hotel because it had a breakfast and because it had an indoor pool. My thinking was we could get to the hotel early enough in the night that the kids could use up energy in the pool and start the morning off doing the same before 8-9 more hours in the car. Surprisingly, when we got there, we were all too tired to do anything and went to bed. After breakfast, we went to the pool and found it to be pretty cold even though it was indoors. After barely getting in, I noticed something in the water. I asked The Wife (not in the water) to see if she could figure out what it was while I watched the kids. Turns out it was the pool light floating around, but still connected by wire. We immediately got out and The Wife told the front desk. They said they were aware of it, but couldn't get it fixed until Monday, BUT they turned off the power to it (which is probably why the pool was cold). Not wanting to end up on the national news as the family of four electrocuted in a pool because they trusted the electrical expertise of some hotel staff in podunk Tennesse, we decided swimming was not going to happen.

So, off we went. Next stop Orlando!

 

[rdearth]

Saturday, Day 2, we wake up and have our hotel breakfast. I'm a sucker for the make your own waffle machines at these hotels. In fact, it's the only time I ever eat waffles. Instead of waffles, this hotel had a make your own pancake machine which worked beautifully for my daughter, but then got clogged for me and only produced dime sized pancakes. Overall though, maybe the most exciting thing of the day!!!!!

For those not familiar with the drive down I-75 to Orlando, there's a section of highway just outside of Chattanooga where you enter Georgia for about two miles, then go back to Tennessee for a couple of miles and then back to Georgia. It's always great fun (in the context of driving for 16 hours) to say "Yay, we're in Georgia!" "Oh, no, we're back in Tennessee!" "Yay, we're in Georgia again!" The 6 year old daughter is most certainly still confused by that.

Also, for those not familiar with this route, this is the most depressing part of the journey. I love to drive and always take on that duty for the entire trip and I like to keep my mind active by watching mile marker signs and calculating our real mile per hour rate as we go and/or project when we'll be at a certain point (GPS devices take the "fun" out of this a little). But when you hit Georgia, the mile marker you see is something like 446. Which means you know you have to go that many miles before even reaching Florida and then you'll still have more to go from there.

So, off we go. For this leg of the trip, we probably broke the law by having The Daughter sit in her booster seat in the front while The Wife entertained The Boy in the back. Daughter thinks this is a fun treat and she gets left alone...but check your local laws about such things.

This is also a good time to bring up Georgia drivers. I've driven a lot around the southeastern part of the country and I've got to say that although Georgia drivers can easily and often reach speeds of close to 100 mph, they are (in general) very good, courteous drivers and the roads are well maintained. By the way, I'm convinced the worst drivers are in Alabama, where they try to reach those same speeds on narrow roads and are constantly in a mindset of weaving through traffic and tailgating the slower car in front. How they don't die in record numbers each year is beyond me.

On a lighter note, somewhere north of Atlanta someone has planted fields of purple-to-pink tall flowers that are such a nice addition to the landscape. Unfortunately, they stop as you get closer to the madhouse that is Atlanta.

Driving through Atlanta, I've finally figured out that the HOV lane, which stands for High Occupancy Vehicle in case you've ever wondered, can be used by anybody with multiple people in their vehicle. It moves along pretty well, but the problem is you are only supposed to get in and out of it at designated areas, so if you get stuck behind a slow car while in it, you're kind of stuck there for a while.

About 4 hours in, we stopped in a town with a Chik Fil A mainly because it had an indoor playground area and because of their brave stance against homosexual marriage. That last part is not true.

After prying the 2 year old off the slide, we were on our way to our rental home in Orlando. We rented a 3 bedroom home in the Indian Creek neighborhood. I'm not real familiar with the different neighborhoods and how they compare, but this was a quiet, homey kind of place. The home worked for us. It included a splash pool (as most do) and plenty of space for the four of us. Things like community pools and activities just don't matter that much to us. To be honest, I'm not even sure this neighborhood "didn't" have those extras--that's how much they mattered.

It wasn't long before each of us was out cold in our king-sized beds...although before that, I did do my little customary private prayer thanking God that we arrived safely. We strongly considered flying for this trip, but tickets would have easily been over $1200 for the four of us and then we'd still need to rent a car in Orlando (another $250 or so), whereas driving only cost us about $270 roundtrip (plus about $100 for a hotel).

Coming next: Day 3 (toads, bugs, and Sea World)