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Preface: Our goal for this trip is to pick up my parents’ car and belongings from Parrish, Florida and get them to Baltimore all in one piece. Bonus goal: To have a fun #brenadventure along the way. We’ve done the 1000+ mile drive in two days before, but because we have a long weekend and like ‘splorin, we’re only driving ~5-6 hours each day.
Prior to traveling, we created a FL>MD Roadtrip Playlist of each of our favorite tunes so that we had quality music the whole time. If you know Keith, there’s an eclectic assortment on there for sure.
Last reminder: Keith's writings are in regular text, my musings and additions are in italics :)
Day 1
We start our journey at BWI Airport, our flight was delayed from a 7:10pm departure to 8:45pm-ish. We decided this gave us plenty of time to have a sit-down airport meal, so we headed to one of our BWI favorites: The Firkin & Flyer. Keith enjoyed a Flying Dog Chesapeake Wheat beer that he kept raving about and we ordered some yummy pub food. I always order the pierogis here, because I’m a one-trick pony who knows what she likes.
After our leisurely dinner, we grabbed some seats by our gate and caught up on Ted Lasso and Brooklyn 99, two of our current favorite shows. This is Keith’s second trip as my Southwest Companion, which means he gets to fly free with me when I travel. I have this benefit until Dec 2022, so we’ve got some traveling to do!
On the plane I watched Dimension20, until we arrived at the very small Sarasota Airport. This was Keith’s first time at SRQ, it’s much closer and easier to get to from my parents’ house so I was very glad when they started flying Southwest in there! We were escorted to Cori’s parents’ house by their good friend Mr. Dale. Once at the Caskey abode, we put ourselves to work gathering all of the items and clothing they desired for us to bring back. That way, when we wake up tomorrow, we can hit the road right away. This put our bedtime at after 1am, which was late for us- but set us up for an easy morning!
Day 2
This morning we started off our day with the end destination of an airport hotel in Savannah, GA. First thing’s first: Dunkin' Donuts and gas. We make good time over to our obligatory pit stop in Disney Springs, where we picked up our Disney World Annual Passes. Disney Springs has excellent shopping, a great assortment of restaurants, and outdoor entertainment throughout the day. As I mentioned in our bio, we won’t detail most of our Disney trips but we haven’t been there since Feb 2020 and were excited to pick up our tickets for the next year! I’m heading back to Disney in two weeks for my friend Stacey’s bachelorette party, and Keith is officiating her Disney wedding in March.
Not wanting to delay (or hang out with the Labor Day Weekend crowds), we hit the road again with the next planned stop at Buc-ee’s in Daytona. Buc-ee’s is a gas station that I learned about on the internet, then I watched many Youtube videos about. It’s a Texas chain that advertises high paying jobs and has a big focus on service. Keith sent me one of these many videos, their food and snack options are extensive. Like, they had at least ten different types of yogurt-covered pretzels, many flavors of salsas, all kinds of jams- as a matter of fact, their shelves were overflowing with preserves.
They had the cleanest gas station restrooms that I’ve ever seen, and the only gas station bathroom that I’ve seen sell art. In Buc-ees we grabbed lunch: I grabbed the brisket sandwich and the sausage Kolache, Cori got the fried chicken sandwich and we loaded up with snacks for the road and a few souvenirs. It’s easy to understand how they’re able to pay their employees so much, because we spent $80 on food and merchandise alone.
We hit the road (Jack) once more, until we arrived at our hotel for the evening around 5:30pm: the Hyatt Place Savannah Airport. It was a solid choice, they had free parking, we had a spacious room, and they offer happy hour and free breakfast (which we did not take part in). We had our evening feast at Sam Snead’s Oak Grill & Tavern next door to the hotel. I had the French Onion Soup and the Caddy Melt, which was amazing. Cori had Shrimp Penne Alfredo. I took Key Lime Pie to go for dessert and we decided to retire for the evening in the hotel. The hotel and restaurant were right next to a golf course, so I of course had to take the scenic walk back and grab some photos. We cleaned ourselves off and got what turned out to be an ok night’s sleep. Something you should know about Keith is that once he wakes up, everyone else *must* be woken- and then he will fall back to sleep and you will not be able to.
Day 3
Daybreak: we awaken and decide to explore downtown Savannah before we hit the road again. It was a short 20-minute drive, very easy! Glad we got there around 9:45am, because we easily found parking- the lot was full when we got back to the car later. We had originally planned to go to a place called Maple Street Biscuit Company, but it was packed. I noticed that there was a weird line outside of the Free People store across the street- like who's that excited about shopping at Free People? It turned out that there was a restaurant underneath it- The Ordinary Pub, so we followed the crowd and decided to check it out.
If the south is good for anything, it’s food. This place was really cool, and had an awesome breakfast menu with tons of brunch cocktail options too. We started out with Pork Belly & Bourbon Donut Sliders and some delicious cold brew. (YUM) I had a Chicken and Waffle Gyro that was amazing: waffle for the flatbread, fried chicken, mascarpone cream as the tzatziki sauce and a side of cheddar grits. Cori had Avocado Toast with Mimosa Shrimp (it was a little much, but decent as far as avo toast goes).
After this delicious breakfast, we walked around the downtown Savannah area a little bit, definitely earmarking this for a trip to be done in the future! We saw some parks and fountains, checked out the City Market area, and went down to the waterfront. Lots of bachelorette parties brunching and walking around- a really solid pub/bar town. For a future trip I’d love to book a trolley tour and a riverboat dinner!
After that we hit the road again with our new destination of my cousin Mike’s house in Raleigh. We arrived at Mike and Liz’s house in south Raleigh around 4:30pm with minor stops along the way. It was great to see their brand new place, and the wonderful additions that they’ve been making to it to turn it into their home. Mike has done a lot of projects and custom cabinet work that make the place look incredible! I was also in awe of Liz’s fiddle leaf fig plant- it was taller than me! They will be welcoming a baby boy in January, so we got to see the beginnings of their nursery as well.
Liz made us a wonderful dinner of penne a la vodka that was so good that I’d eat the sauce itself like a soup. We will definitely be getting that recipe. Like, I could’ve eaten countless bowls of it- insanely good. After dinner we had a few drinks (maybe more than a few), caught up on life, and watched the Notre Dame game. It was really great to hang out with Mike and Liz, we haven’t really gotten to spend any one-on-one time with them (Brennan family functions are usually a busy affair)! I turned in after the football game. I went to bed around 1am and settled in for a long summer’s nap. (It wasn’t that long, see below)
Day 4
I awoke around 6:30am, not wanting to keep Cori awake with my tossing and turning I got out of bed and went downstairs. I promptly set off the home alarm when I went outside to sit on the front porch. He tried really hard not to wake me up, but alas, destiny. Cori slept until her alarm went off at 9:30am, we got showers, and hit the road again. We were very appreciative of Mike and Liz for opening their home to us, we had a wonderful time!
We grabbed gas and breakfast at Sheetz, we figured today would be our heaviest traffic day and the traffic has not disappointed us in that. When we started the trip today our ETA to home was 4:30pm, we’re up to 5:30pm now and rolling at a steady 20mph on I-95.
The rest of our trip was traffic-filled and uneventful, we stopped to get the car a good wash and made it home by 5:40pm. Not bad, considering we had a few bathroom stops along the way.
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