We live outside Princeton, NJ. My mom, who took the kids for us, lives at Exit 2 of the NJ Turnpike. We left our house at 6:15 am or so and got to her house at 7:15. I didn't want to get there too early, and she was just getting up when we arrived. We left there at 7:45 and took back roads to get to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. We lost about 15 min there due to construction. We took I-95 south through the Ft. McHenry Tunnel and then to the Beltway around DC. We followed the I-95 route east around the city. We lost 45 min due to construction where I-95, I-395 and I-495 all come together near the drawbridge. I actually put the car in park there and we got out of the car to stretch. Once we cleared Potomac Mills, the road opened up. We took I-295 around Richmond, and then continued I-95 the rest of the way down. The speed limit in VA is 65, so we did 75. The speed limit in NC, SC, and FL is 70, so we did 80. We probably had 4 or 5 potty breaks the first day and 2 gas stops (they were combined with the potty breaks). We made it to the Savannah Airport exit on I-95 about 8:00 PM, about 19 miles into Georgia. Had we not lost the time earlier in the day, I think we'd have hit Northern Florida. We could have kept driving, but we hadn't eaten dinner yet and we wanted a good night's rest.
We left GA around 6:15 and we were sitting at a restaurant in Celebration sipping tea and coffee at 10:30. We had one potty break on that leg.
Coming back, we left SSR at 9:15 and made it to Ashland, VA (just north of Richmond) at 9:30 PM. We hit 2 stretches of slow traffic. One was due to construction near Rocky Mount, and one due to a 4 car accident. We also had to slow down near Savannah due to heavy rains. We dropped to 30 mph and put our flashers on because the rain was so heavy. That lasted about 5 very long minutes (I was driving). We left Ashland around 6:30 and got to my Mom's around 10:45. We didn't have the delays going through DC this time, but the area we got caught up in going south was backed up again. After we picked up the kids, it was an hour ride home.
We were very pleased with the travel part of the trip. It wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. We did buy a Disney Trivia book and read that periodically through the trip. It made the time go quickly. We brought CDs with us, but only played 2 the entire trip. It was more fun to find a local station and listen. There are some interesting radio commercials. Of course, I can't think of any examples right now, but they were definitely local businesses. We got a pretty good chuckle out of them.
If you count total travel time, it was about 17 hrs each way with travel stops. I'm not counting the time spent at my Mom's in the number. Now, if we had our 4 kids with us, our potty stops would be longer than 5-10 min.
