The Drive Down

The plan was to meet at Shell Convenient Mart at 8:00 pm. We left our house about 75 minutes before that because I noticed as I was getting the van ready that our DVD player in the van was not getting power from the van. It was only running on battery power (it's a dockable one so it can be removed and used as a portable) but of course the batter pack is dead. So we headed to batteries plus to see if we could find a power plug for it because we don't have time to figure out why there is no power going to the docking station. Of course we got there too late, they closed at 7:00. So, no movies for the kids on the way down. But, they had their Leapster and Pixter so we can deal.

We ended up going back home to get the tire guage we forgot. Michael also needed to take some allergy medicine and of course Michaela had to go to the bathroom, again. We still got to Shell about 15 minutes early. We put gad in the van and got drinks for the car. Michaela had to go to the bathroom again about the time Kelly and Jeremy drove up. She always has to go a lot when she's excited.

The amazing thing is MIL and FIL were the last to arrive. They were actually two minutes late! So, after messing with GPS systems we were on the road by about 8:10 pm. MIL and FIL in the lead, Kelly and Jeremy next and we brought up the rear.

It was a pretty uneventful drive. We stopped at 11:00 pm, 2:15am, and 4:30 am for potty and gas breaks. Around 7:30 we stopped at a Shoney's in southern Alabama for breakfast. At this time all the adults agreed that we are too old for these long overnight car drives. We were all aching but still in good spirits and eager to finish our drive.

We finally reached Destin at about 10:30 a.m. We drive into Destin on a very long toll bridge. Bridges make me nervous to begin with, this one makes me even more nervous and they are working on it so I was VERY happy to get to the Destin side of it.

I realized as we were driving over the Florida state line that I'd forgotten to print out our parking permit for the parking lot where our condo is located. Everyone wanted me to call our condo to see if we could check in earlier than it says, too so as we were getting into Destin I made that phone call. I found out we could get a parking permit at the office to the complex and that we could check in by 1:00 pm, instead of 4:00 pm.