Road Trips Rule

I recently took a trip up to Tennessee and North Carolina for a friend's wedding. It was a classic girlfriends getaway as a friend and I rented a car from Nashville and drove across the state of Tennessee through the Great Smokey Mountains and over to to Greensboro for the main event. With no boys along on the trip, we took as many pit stops as we needed for bathroom breaks, coffee at Starbucks, scenic photo opportunities, and breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

We shopped. We giggled. We danced and partied like rock stars. We gave each other our own Cherokee Indian names ... Talks With Hands and Drives Like Turtle. We shopped some more.

My whole point to this is how the Classic Roadtrip does not get enough credit as a fun vacation. We've all been sucked into the vortex of travel magazines and advertising telling us that we have to go some place exotic and far and away for it to be a "real" vacation. We've forgotten the fun of sharing time with friends on the open road, singing loudly to your favorite songs, eating junk food, and playing silly games like Mad Libs and Alphabet Signs.

My journey home added even more evidence to my More Road Trips mantra. Because of high winds and rainy weather my flight was delayed on the way home. And as I sat captive in the Nashville airport for an additional 4 hours, I contemplated the thought of just renting a car and driving home to Florida. Doable. Just when I grew the courage to stand up and start walking to the rental car counter, they finally boarded our plane and we were off to Atlanta. Going through security again ... having to take off my shoes and walk barefoot in a public place (ew!) ... giving myself a backache from hauling my luggage from one gate to the next ... I was disenchanted with flying. Sitting at the terminal much longer than anticipated, I entertained myself with all the magazines I had brought, read them twice, then I started doing a scary thing. I started doing math. I calculated how much my fuel cost would be and the hours on the road if I were to have driven my car the whole way and skipped the airports all together. Fact of the matter is, I would have saved $200 and arrived at my destination 3 hours sooner. Go figure! Even with gas prices as high as they are, DRIVING is unbelievably the time saver, cost saver and perhaps even the greener choice!

So exactly how far could you go on one tank of gas? Well, if you live anywhere in Florida or the South East, you could come visit our little town of Mount Dora. Road trips here deliver treasures of fresh squeezed orange juice, trading post Seminole moccasins, salt water taffy, sea shells and gator teeth.

Take an End of Summer Road Trip and let us know if what kind of adventures (or misadventures) you get into.

--Rachelle