Traveling: Fort Myers to Jacksonville and visiting with relatives

Well, when we left Fort Myers, we packed days ahead, because when you have a big family, and when you are traveling with all your belongings, it takes a while to pack. Not only that, when you stay a long time in one place, you lose track of everything, so you have to gather everything back into one place, and into one vehicle, which takes A LOT of time, I can tell you that!

So we were off, and on our journey once more! Our first stop was Aunt Penny’s, and she lived six hours north of Fort Myers because she lived in Jacksonville. Of course, it didn’t take exactly six hours, because, between all the bathroom breaks, lunch, and snack breaks, we got there a little later than anticipated. We made sure to give ourselves some extra time so that we could fit in all the bathroom breaks because with little ones with small bladders, you need to stop often!

We made it to Aunt Penny’s without complications or problems, and it was a great visit! We stayed one night with them, a nice break from the long day of travel. She is such an amazing hostess, being so ready to serve us a delicious meal and refuse to let us help her clean up afterward. Charlie and Aunt Penny were such a blessing to us on our trip up, and we are so thankful for how sweet they were to open up their home to us. We had such an amazing time, and it was nice to get to know Charlie and her more!

We spent one night, and they fed us an amazing breakfast, then we were on our way to Alabama! We would not be able to make it all the way to Memphis Tennessee in one stretch, so we booked a hotel in Alabama, which was a mid-way point. We drove for eight hours that day, which was hard on all of us, but it went off without a hitch! We stopped at different gas stations, and the best ones so far have been Love’s, Pilot’s, and Circle K’s, which are all traveling gas stations for truckers and long-haul travelers. It worked out great, we would stop for a bathroom, and get lunch at one stop. At one time, we stopped at a marathon, in an emergency bathroom break for the littles, and when we were there, three strays dogs were there. The smallest one ran up to Elijah when he came out of the gas station, and ran around him and licked him and jumped up at him. It was so cute, and if we were traveling, we would have brought it home, but of course, we are, so we had to leave the stray behind.

We got to the hotel, spent a restful night there, and then got back on the road to Memphis, but as we were driving through Alabama, we stopped at Rickwood Caverns, which is a state pack with underground caverns and caves. We got there and explored the caverns for an hour or so, and it was such an amazing experience! When you were that far underground, it was cool, quiet, and without any moving air, probably the most peaceful place you could go, because nothing lives or moves down there. A cavern guide took us through all the caverns, showing us different rock formations and an underground lake. It was a quite a once-in-a-liftime experience!

After exploring the caverns, we went to lunch, and made our way to Memphis. We got to drive through Mississipi, wasn’t much to see, but it’s the thought that counts! It didn’t take us more than four or five hours to get to Shawn and Mindy’s, but we were quite tired when we arrived. They were so nice and hospitable! I can’t wait to visit them again! In our next blog post, I’m gonna talk in more detail about our visit with Shawn and Mindy.

Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope you enjoyed reading and got some information from it! -Sadie