We recently took our second family roadtrip from upstate New York to Florida, driving all the way down the east coast and back up again. Last April was our first one, when our kids were only 2 and 3 years old. We had enough success with that one that we decided to do it again. This year, they were ages 3 and 4. Our little roadtrip warriors.
This blog post summarizes both trips… how we planned them (and how we didn’t plan them), where we stopped, foods we packed, things we’d do differently, and how we kept the kids from asking “are we there yet” 1,000 times (no screen-time included).
I should start by saying these trips were both planned very last minute. My husband has a snow plowing business, and pretty quickly after snow season, he dives into his very busy asphalt maintenance season. On both occasions, it took looking at the extended weather forecast to confirm whether or not we were going. A potential chance of snow would have squashed our hopes of going anywhere… if you know, you know.
I do have to acknowledge my amazing husband and give kudos to him because he did ALL of the driving on these trips. I very much enjoy riding passenger, and would be white-knuckling with sweaty palms if I were in the driver’s seat on the busy parts of I-95.
Here’s a look back on both our family roadtrips from upstate New York to Florida…
Planning Our Adventures
When it comes to roadtrips, we have a total go-with-the-flow mentality, leaving room for spontaneity along the way. While on the road, it becomes less about the destination and more about enjoying the journey, and I love that.
If we were to drive straight through to Florida from our home, it would take approximately 20 hours, but we gave ourselves an extra day to take advantage of an overnight stay and some exploration.
How We Planned Our Route
To be honest, we didn’t plan it. Gone are our days of the large maps in the glove box with highlighted routes planned days in advance. That’s what I remember from my childhood trips. Instead, I opened up the Waze app as we were hitting the road. It’s definitely an app I recommend downloading before any roadtrip. Aside from being a map and giving you driving directions, it’s really handy and tells you so much about your route. It’ll let you know when there might be a hazard or accident ahead, where there may be police ahead, upcoming tolls, alternative routes to save time, best time to leave, and more.
Important note that can save you lots of money: While in the app, definitely make sure to check the amount of tolls your chosen route will cost you! About a half hour into our trip, I realized we were on a route that would have cost us over $600 in tolls! I selected a different route giving us approximately the same ETA, and it cost us only $46 in tolls. That’s a huge difference, and what a costly mistake it would have been if I didn’t realize it so early on!
Packing For Our Roadtrips
In the days before our trips, I did some grocery shopping and food prepping. Having lots of good healthy food is my biggest tip for keeping happy kids on a roadtrip! Here’s a post I wrote on some of my favorite healthy road-trip foods for kids. As a kid, roadtrips for me meant lots of fast-food, but I definitely think and eat differently these days! I packed a small cooler for the cold-foods and put the dry foods in a paper bag. It all stayed in the cab of the truck with us for easy grabbing. Don’t forget to bring extra bags for garbage!
A couple other items I packed in the truck to keep the kids happy were this awesome kids doodle board, some barbies and action figures. My son was especially excited to see all the excavators, cranes and dump trucks at all the constructions sites, so he was happy to just watch out the window most of the time.
If traveling with potty-trained little kids, I definitely recommend getting a travel potty for them. There are a lot to choose from, and we personally have this one for our kids. It has come in extremely handy over the last few years. Much quicker, easier, and dare I say cleaner than bringing kids into a rest-stop or convenience store bathroom while on the road!
When We Left
The first year we drove down, we left home March 31 and came back April 9. It was a good two weeks before most schools’ spring break, so I imagine traffic wasn’t really any more busy than usual, either on the way down or the way back.
The more recent time, we left April 5 and came home April 14. April 5 was the Wednesday before our area’s spring break, so it wasn’t bad at all. The way home, however, it was the Friday of spring break. Lots of people were traveling back home, and the traffic was terrible almost the entire way.
Both years, we left our home around 4am (I shot for 4am, but it was more like 4:30am). After getting everything into the truck, we got the kids out of bed and had them go potty. Then, into their carseats they went with a couple small blankets. They went back to sleep for a good few hours, waking up once we hit New Jersey.
We were early enough to miss most of the NYC traffic, as we arrived in the NYC/NJ area around 7/7:30am. If we did leave that half hour earlier, it would have been even better.
Where We Stopped
Once the kids woke up, we stopped at a rest-stop in NJ to brush their teeth, use the bathrooms, get changed out of their pjs, and fill up the gas tank. Once on the road again, I pulled out some breakfast snacks. Our next stop was a rest area in either Virginia or North Carolina.
Our Overnight Stays and Sight-Seeing Adventures
Year 1 – Savannah, GA
Our first year, we stopped just outside of Savannah, Georgia for an overnight stay. My in-laws were traveling back home to NY from FL towing their camper, and though we were driving opposite directions, we all happened to be passing by Savannah around the same time. So we made a plan to get off I-95 in Hardeesville, SC to see each other. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and ended up sleeping in their parked camper!
In the morning, we headed into downtown Savannah for some breakfast and to explore the city for a few hours. What a BEAUTIFUL place! Three hours was in absolutely no means enough time to see all of Savannah, but we got a nice glimpse. We had breakfast at Goose Feathers Cafe around 8:30am, and walked around from there. The huge sprawling oak trees covered in Spanish moss were just so captivating, picturesque and beautiful to see! (I do wish we got some more pictures of them!) We also loved checking out the historic architecture on our walk. We walked through a couple parks where the kids had fun getting splashed by fountains, and ended up on River Street where we watched the massive cargo ships pass through and checked out some shops. We quickly realized Savannah is a place we definitely want to go back to and check out for a longer duration!
We left Savannah around 12pm, and got back on I-95 en route to Orlando. The rest of the drive from there went pretty quick. It took only a little over 5 hours to make it to our AirBNB destination in Kissimmee, FL.
Year 2 – Charleston, SC
Charleston has been on my bucket list of places to check out, so I when planning our trip, I had it in mind as a good place to stop. I didn’t book any overnight accommodations in advance though because I wasn’t sure if we’d make it all the way there, or if we’d have to stop somewhere sooner. It definitely wasn’t a problem making it to Charleston. We made great time, arriving in the area around 6pm. I definitely wish I had made accommodations sooner though! It’s one thing I would have done differently about our trip.
Once we made it to SC and I knew we’d make it to Charleston in good time, I began look for hotels using the Expedia app. I thought I lucked out, because I found a hotel with excellent ratings and reviews for a good price in North Charleston. Well, once we arrived, we all got out of the truck and went inside to check-in… the place was being renovated and was a complete sheetrock dust factory. Absolutely not an environment I wanted my kids to sleep in! Nowhere on the Expedia listing did it say renovations were going on, but it did say “non-refundable.” So, I had to spend quite a bit of time talking to managers and people at Expedia to get my money back.
After doing some more driving around, we ended up at a Marriott in North Charleston. We picked up a pizza down the road from MOD Pizza, ate it in the hotel room, and went to sleep. First thing in the morning, we headed into Charleston.
Another BEAUTIFUL place! The streets were beautiful, the buildings were beautiful, and all the people we encountered were so friendly! Talk about southern charm. Like when we visited Savannah, a few hours was enough to get a little glimpse, but in no means enough time too see all of what Charleston has to offer. It’s another place I’d love to go back to for at least a couple days.
Once we got into Charleston, we parked near the Charleston City Market, and walked to get breakfast at a cafe near Waterfront Park. We then walked through Waterfront Park and took some pictures at the fountains. The pineapple fountain in Waterfront Park is a famous and recognizable one. Then we walked through the Charleston City Market, which is lined with vendors selling local art and souvenirs.
With noontime approaching, we decided we had to hit the road again. Before heading right back to I-95 though, there was one more place I wanted to check out – Angel Oak Tree on Johns Island. It was about 30 a minute drive from Charleston City Market.
Angel Oak is a famous tree thought to be between 400-500 years old, though some believe it to be much older than that. It’s a popular landmark in the Charleston area. It was a majestic sight to see. While we were there, there was a wedding going on, as well as some men working to do some soil testing at the base of the tree. We were able to walk around the tree and get some good photos. After about 30 minutes at Angel Oak Tree, we were back on the road en route to Florida.
Before getting to I-95, about an hour from Angel Oak, we came across a great roadside stand/store, called the Carolina Cider Company. My husband quickly hit the brakes and pulled in. We got some iced coffees, a couple pies (the cherry pie was delish), and cider to go. They had a large offering in the store… things like pickles, jams, salsas, syrups, nuts, teas and lots of cider and fresh pies. You can find this roadside store at 81 Charleston Hwy, Yemassee, SC.
After leaving Angel Oak Tree around 1pm, stopping at the Carolina Cider Company store, and making one or two other stops for diesel, we arrived in Lauderdale by the Sea around 10pm. We did hit quite a lot of Jacksonville stop-and-go traffic, which slowed us down by about an hour.
Driving home
Last year, we left Orlando around 6am. It was a great time to leave. The kids slept in the truck for a good long while. This year, we left Orlando around 11am. We were in no rush, and even went to the grocery store to stock up on snacks. We were at Disney the night before until it closed, leaving no time to shop for food.
The drive home is never as exciting as the drive down, and definitely feels longer – especially when you’re dealing with heavy stop-and-go traffic most of the way up! As I mentioned earlier, our most recent drive back home from Florida was at the end of a spring break week, and we shared the road with a lot of vacationers! There was also major flooding in Fort Lauderdale that week, which closed down the airport, so I imagine there was some added traffic from that as well. After only a few hours into our drive home, we did say we’d never do it on a spring break week again… at least not on a Friday! We spent a couple hours in standstill traffic on a few occasions. The Waze app did guide us off some exits and led us to “back roads” to divert us from some traffic jams.
The first year wasn’t nearly as bad, as it wasn’t spring break yet. We also left much earlier in the morning that time. The only traffic I remember hitting that trip was DC rush hour traffic. We stopped off an exit in NJ late at night and got a hotel with no problem.
Like on the way down, I didn’t make any overnight accommodations anywhere because I wasn’t sure where we’d end up. Well, I should have. Around 7pm on our most recent trip, I pulled out the Expedia App and started looking. We had only made it to North Carolina. Every time I thought I found something on Expedia, I’d go to book it and it’d tell me “sold out.” I found a great hotel off a major exit with lots of food around, got excited to book it, but it wouldn’t let me, even though it said rooms available. So we got off the exit and went in to see what was going on. They told me not to trust Expedia or any other third party sites so last-minute because their systems don’t update as quick. They said they had sold out a couple hours earlier. That happened at the next 5 hotels we stopped at. 😳 We were all starting to get miserable, and the kids wanted out of their carseats. I ended up booking one on Expedia again anyway, just to drive 30 minutes off an exit to it and find AGAIN it was being renovated and super sheetrock dusty. I still can’t believe that happened twice on the trip. I again had to contact Expedia to get a refund, but they were pleasant through the process. We FINALLY found a hotel with availability after midnight in Rocky Mount, NC. Lesson learned… next time we travel anywhere like this during a busy spring break, I will book accommodations in advance! We wasted a whole lot of time, and there was plenty of late night arguing going on in the front seats. 😅
We left the hotel around 8:30am that Saturday and made it home around 7pm after stopping at Chipotle for some dinner.
Despite the extra-long and tiring drive home on our most recent trip, we had a great family roadtrip experiences. We made memories to last a lifetime, and look forward to the next time. I’m so happy and grateful that we got to check out Savannah and Charleston along the way, and look forward to visiting both again some day. If you’ve never been, these are two stops I definitely recommend making. They are great overnight and exploration stops. ☺️
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