WI to FL, 8 1/2 days

[Stephanie99]

I think I made a poor word choice in "tolerate." I just meant we will see how they react to it. My daughter actually WANTS to drive to Florida, but obviously she has no basis for comparison. For myself, my only real long road trips I remember well were with a group of friends in our early twenties who would just drive till we wanted to stop and look for any hotel room we could afford (and boy did we stay in some doozies!! lol.) Which is not very comparable to the kind of trip we'd be planning.

So I'm grateful for the advice here. I think my biggest concern is multiple long days in the car in a row, especially for the kids. I know the advice is to take a pace that will allow them to enjoy the drive, but given the distance and time, I'm struggling to see how to make it enjoyable for all of us.

What if we took the Friday off. Left early Friday morning, to get through the Chicago traffic. Maybe drive to the bottom of KY. Have the evening to relax and the kids can swim, etc. Then there's a shorter day to the Atlanta area on Saturday, we wouldn't have to wake up super early (I'm a morning person, my husband is a night owl.) and we'd have time with our friends. And then leave early from ATL to get to Orlando in time for dinner and some fun.

I have had people suggest doing the drive in as few days as possible, with the idea that breaking the drives down a little shorter means more DAYS spent with a large chunk of time in the car, which is too hard on everyone.

[Stephanie99]

what I REALLY wish is that we could drive down and fly back. Too bad we'd have to figure out a way to get the car back, lol. We could consider moving the trip up, and see if we could find a good drive-out-of-Florida deal. But then my daughter would have to miss a week of second grade.

Truth be told, I am looking into this for next year. I know I seem crazy to be so concerned about it right now. I just am trying to figure out whether it's even feasible, because I don't want to spend all that time looking forward to it only to have to ditch the idea when I realize it's not a good fit for our family.
It's been so long since a bigger vacation like this that I can't help but want to get excited about it a year in advance, lol.

[Midwest Michael]

I have had people suggest doing the drive in as few days as possible, with the idea that breaking the drives down a little shorter means more DAYS spent with a large chunk of time in the car, which is too hard on everyone.

The people who are giving you this suggestion are people who think that the road trip portion of the trip is a chore, and not an opportunity.

There are plenty of people whose only experience with roadtripping is driving someone as fast as possible - often driving far too many miles in a day to be safe, much less enjoyable - and "drugging' their kids with non-stop DVDs and electronics to keep them happy. Those kinds of trips are very hard on everyone. It's an unfortunate irony, that people who think time in a car is hard on people, would suggest you spend more time in a car all at once!

The reality is you've got the same number of miles to cover, and will spend roughly the same amount of time in the car no matter which approach you take. You can spend hours upon hours strapped into a seat, with limited ability to move, with the goal of "getting there" as fast as possible. However, the approach we recommend is to break up those hours by stopping frequently - because there are lots of things to see and do along the road which means you every time you stop, you are "there."

With 3 days each way, you'd certainly be in a good position to have time to enjoy yourself while driving both directions.