Day 7 & 8: A Few Last Hurrahs

We have reached the end, friends. The last couple days of the big trip. Our adventure to Florida is coming to a close! Don’t get too teary eyed, though- we’ve still got a few surprises in store for next week… a monster of a video and Superlatives (we did them last year and loved highlighting the best and worst moments of the trip)! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might want to check out Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 before we wrap it up with 7 & 8 today.

Day 7 was a day of driving. Another 6 + hours on the road from the Keys, all the way back up to Orlando. The plan was to stay in Orlando one last night (at the same hotel we stayed in during the beginning of our trip) and fly out the next morning. So Saturday we packed up all of our stuff, said a final goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and hopped in the car for our big road trip back north. As we drove, we were thankful that we had thought through our timing carefully… there was a looooooong line of cars headed south for Memorial Day Weekend and we were happily moving along in the other direction, patting ourselves on the back for remembering that we’d want to be heading out of the Keys about this time.

Along the way, we made a few stops… one to check out a neat gift shop, full of beachy goods to take home. I grabbed two starfish- one to keep and one to gift to my cousin, who had been keeping watch over our house while we were away. A couple hours later, we stopped for an early lunch at the Green Turtle Inn.

We had heard that their Lobster Mac n’ Cheese was to die for and I’m a sucker for a good mac n’ cheese. It was yummy! Very very rich and filling, but yummy. Mitch thought it had a lot of garlic in it and I would have to agree. So if you’re in the neighborhood, give it a shot, but don’t expect to be running a marathon or kissing anyone shortly after. 🙂

We weren’t in any rush and the trip sailed by as we made our way back up to Orlando. We realized that we were going to make it back to the hotel early- around 4pm or so. We didn’t have any other plans that night and since we didn’t want to just sit around at the hotel for hours until bedtime, we made a spontaneous decision to alter our route and spend a couple of hours visiting Downtown Disney before heading back to the hotel.

Dinner was a quick stop at Buffalo Wild Wings (one of our favorites wherever we go)…

… and then we drove straight to Downtown Disney! Now, remember what I said about thinking through the timing of the trip? Consider that null and void in this case. When we were planning which days we’d visit the parks, we purposely scheduled them for early in the week- as far away from Memorial Day Weekend as possible. Somehow,  in making the decision to come back and visit Downtown Disney, that thought never crossed our mind. Until we were sitting in an hour’s worth of traffic just to get into the parking lot! The holiday weekend, mixed with the heavy construction that is currently going on over at Disney made the traffic situation a nightmare. BUT, we figured that we were already there so we stuck it out, parked, and enjoyed a fun few hours walking around, listening to music, and eating ice cream.

After a bit more traffic on the way out, we finally made it back to the hotel and fell asleep shortly after showers and getting things ready for tomorrow’s flight home.

The next morning (Sunday), we made it to the airport around 7am, returned our beloved rental car, checked in with the airline, and waited to board our 8:35am flight. It was a short trip home and we landed around 11:00am. We were tired, but thankful for such a wonderful trip AND one more day (thank you Memorial Day!) to recover before having to go back to real life.

All in all, it was an adventure. There were highs and lows, lots of excitement and trying new things. And since “adventure” is our middle name, it was the perfect trip for us. 🙂

Thanks for tagging along! As I said, you deserve a T-shirt or something. I’ll get right on that. Just as soon as I stop finding sand everywhere…