Planning a New Adventure

*Written Mar 2, but published retroactively cause I'm never sure the wisdom of publishing when we're away together; will do the same for our whole trip*

So Chris' parents generally go to Florida every winter; this has been interrupted by COVID of late, but this year it's back on.  We, traditionally, go away every February for vacation.  This also has been interrupted by COVID, but also by C taking a teaching job which ensures he can never go away in Feb and by us buying a house, ensuring we also have no money to travel.  Booo.

However, we are both fairly stir crazy, and COVID restrictions are lifting, so we decided we'd road trip to Florida and visit his parents for a day or two during March Break.  So that's a long drive I was not super looking forward to, and one to get to a place I honestly had very little interest in visiting (the people - yes.  The place?  Less so).  Someday I'd love to do Disney as an adult, but that's not feasible this year, and otherwise what's in Florida beyond crazy news stories, spring break students, and retirees?  hmmmm. Google and Fl tourism didn't help :( 

Well.  Mum and Dad gave us an awesome Xmas gift this year of a year of unlimited Let's Roam.   So this is a scavenger hunt company, that I've done several hunts with.  I think my favourite so far was Charlottetown with Mum in the Before Times.  It's done on your phone and has you explore the city and learn completely random stuff.  So with that in mind, I did a quick search for Florida.  There are a bunch.  Awesome.  

It even has a great card!

I'm sure you can see where my thinking started to drift - road trip around scavenger hunts!   Right, so the last time I was in Fl, I was 8 and we flew in.  Suffice to say my knowledge of Fl geography is limited to finding the state on the map.   So Google maps to the rescue.

Started with how long does it take to get to Fl and what states do we drive through.   Once I had that, I looked for hunts around where C's parents are.  Also I very much wanted to go to the Everglades and C wanted to go to Gatorland, so I put those in our misc list.   Then I google mapped those two areas (uh the Everglades are substantial so that took more than I expected to figure out), and looked at what cities between C's parents and there had hunts.  All good.   

Then C suggested he'd like to go to Everglades City -- which is way farther than I was intending.  And maybe the keys?   hmmmm okay, so instead of a centralised trip from C's parents' location, maybe it should be a continual road trip.

In the end I ended up with an awesome but slightly insane potential road trip - that included 2 nights with C's parents, a boat trip they recommended, Gatorland, Everglades, the Keys, drives along both costs, and scavenger hunts in up to 9 cities!  Even including two outside of Fl on the way home (before we hit cold).

Draft plan, definitely subject to change.
Also - notice how close we'll be to the Bahamas?!?!  
I'd so rather go there!

Now all we need is the weather to cooperate and nothing dramatic to happen w COVID again and we're good to go!   Plus side, I'm actually really looking forward to it now.  Down side, it's going to be *very* close quarters and I, at least, won't likely sleep.   Here's hoping we're still married and speaking at the end ;-P