above: our first Florida sunset in over a year, during an overnight stop

Leaving DC was both easy and hard: easy since we were both excited to be back on the road and hard to leave family behind again. Hopefully they will come visit us out west next year as we travel around.

Florida (by way of a few stops) was our next big destination. We wanted to visit Mike’s Mom before heading out west. Since we were driving through North Carolina anyway, we took a couple of side trips to visit some old college friends (one of Mike’s and one of mine). I probably sound a bit like a broken record, but it’s really nice hooking up with old friends again. It’s great to remember why you were friends in the first place, especially when you haven’t seen them in so long.

Waiting for Six Flags Over Georgia to open.

From NC, we took a slight side trip over to Atlanta GA to hit (yet) another Six Flags. This one was only open during the weekend which made for a slightly crowded park. We tend to scope out what rides we are interested in before heading to the park, so we already knew where to go. Since we’re coaster freaks, we only hit the those rides and then we were done within a few hours.

Since we had a fun day out, it was only fair to give Opie a fun day out at a nearby dog park.

From GA, we headed to Campground Mom in FL for nine days. As much as our friends and family enjoy our visits, I really feel like college kids every time we see someone. We get lots of great food, do our laundry in their HUGE machines (compared to ours), eat up all their bandwidth, and in the case of Campground Mom, we just kind of took over her whole house. When we’re on the road, deliveries are sometimes hard to time correctly so we’ll often send packages to a friend/family’s home in advance. By the time we get there, they’ll often have a corner of their house cordoned off with all our packages. So poor Mom not only had to deal with a humongous RV in her driveway, but lots of packages to keep track of before we even got there!

Yummy birthday cake… thanks Mom!

We really did get very spoiled there. Lots of fantastic meals (our pants got even tighter by the end of our stay), a warm pool, and so much space to spread out. Since it was Mike’s birthday, Mom of course had a big chocolate cake waiting for us. Yum! Mike also received his early Christmas present we had shipped to Mom’s house: a new DJI Phantom drone, and he had lots of room to play with it here.

Now how does this drone thingy work…?

I got to use the dining area to do some serious sewing, and Opie jumped in the pool every chance he got! I think the only one who didn’t enjoy the time was Mom’s cat since Opie chased him anytime Opie saw him. The poor cat spent most of the time in Mom’s bedroom.

Opie went for a swim every chance he got.

With all our family visits completed, it was time to start our race across the South.