Sunday, November the 1st was the end of daylight savings time, and it was the day we were headed to Florida for the week. Our plan was to leave at 4:00 am, seeing we had a twelve hour drive ahead of us, but the boy talked us into leaving a little bit earlier than that.
The new 4:00 am was what was 5:00 am the day before. I guess you could say we still felt like we left in the 4 o’clock hour, but our newly set house clocks all said 3 something. This means that I woke up at 2:28, new time, which was exactly two minutes before the alarm went off; the boy was already up and getting ready. All I can say is that getting up for vacation is way more exciting than getting up for everyday, because it very much felt like 2 in the morning, but waking up wasn’t really that bad.
There was nothing special about the drive to Orlando. Pretty boring really. We made our usual vacation breakfast stop at Cracker Barrel just before Chattanooga, and were surprisingly the only ones in the restaurant. Have you ever seen an empty Cracker Barrel? Me either. This is what it looked like.
This was only because we got there ten minutes before they opened, and were apparently hungrier than the other few who were waiting in the parking lot, because we made it in the door and sat down before them. The best thing about this Cracker Barrel breakfast was that we were actually waited on in a timely manner. We are usually invisible at the Cracker Barrel when we travel. I guess the servers this day had nothing better to do; plus, we we did kind of stand out amongst all those empty seats.
It was mostly gloomy, a little wet, and occasionally raining through all of Georgia, but 11:00 am Atlanta wasn’t too bad – traffic wise either.
Being a passenger makes me kind of bored on long trips. I didn’t drive once on this one, and while my boy was quietly seated in the back messing around on his computer for most of the day, I was trying to make my way through the introductory chapter, The Custom House, of the Scarlet Letter. I didn’t get very far – it was so boring! After giving up on that, I briefly dozed off, more than a few times. But once we got into Florida, the sun came out and I started taking selfies.
These were not your everyday selfies though. I was trying out my handy dandy, new selfie stick. Yup, I am now one of those people that carry around a selfie stick. OH, NO!
We stopped for gas and a bathroom break around this time and decided to get ourselves some McDonald’s french fries. They were what you would expect from McDonald’s, the same as the last time, but the workers there were kind of rude, and several of the people were, well, let me just say I really think there could be a People of McDonald’s website, and it might even give the People of Walmart some competition. We told ourselves we wouldn’t be stopping at that one again. But now that I am writing this, I don’t even remember where we were – just some small side-of-the-road town in Florida, I think. Or was it just before Florida? Oh well, I am sure we will stop at more like this sooner or later, you can’t avoid it. Moving along…
We got to our room around 4:30, checked in, and enjoyed the hotel’s complimentary ‘social hour.’ Then we went for a walk to stretch our legs and see what was around; but, not before getting my boy to take a quick pic of what I was wearing, of course.
“It’s for the blog,” I probably said as I was telling him he would have to wait a few more minutes before we went out to eat. “Oops, you are in the picture…”
“I don’t care,” he said.
Just across from our room was the Orlando Eye and several places to eat. Since our only real meal of the day was breakfast, we were all pretty hungry. We chose the Yard House, one of the closer restaurants to our room as we were walking back, and had a nice meal to end our day.
I don’t care too much to take Insta-food pics, but I do like to take Insta-drink pictures to post on Instagram, so you all get to see what I had to drink this night, and never mind a boring ol’ picture of the fish and chips that my guy and I shared. This was called an Old 43 and it was very good.
And while we were out enjoying our first evening in Orlando, the fourth member of the family was back at home getting the ‘special guest’ treatment – on Auntie’s couch AND wearing bows. I can’t tell if she’s happy, or wondering what it is that is happening to her. My guy says the latter.
And that was Day 1, or better referred to as the traveling to Orlando day.
Rejoice for the Day 