As I listen to the freezing rain hitting against our house, it feels weird knowing that this is our last winter in Wisconsin.  While this is one of the awesome things about our move (no more brutal winters), it also hits home that we are leaving everything we know.  The second half of Ben’s IEP meeting was today, and as team members left, individuals I have known for years, it occurred to me that I would probably never see them again.   It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that we are achieving our dream, but with it comes the cost of familiarity of our surroundings, in both material possessions as well as friendships.

We have set our itinerary for our trip down and wanted to share it here.  When we drove down to Walt Disney World in 2009, we had three drivers and looking back, we pushed ourselves by driving far more miles in a day than we should have.  In July we will be at two drivers, and because we are looking at this as an adventure and not a marathon driving experience, we will be taking three days to arrive in Clermont. All of our hotel reservations (except the arrival day in Orlando) have been secured, using our AAA discount.

Thursday, July 21 :   As the movers will arrive by 8am on Friday, July 22nd,  we decided the best option is to spend the evening in a hotel in Fond du Lac.  Today will be spend finalizing any last minute details.

Friday, July 22 :  Our goal is to leave Fond du Lac by 5:00 pm and spend the night in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.  Our original thought was to spend a second night in Fond du Lac and leave early Saturday morning, but decided that this at least gets us to the Illinois border and a jump start on our travels.  We estimate the movers will be completed by 1:00 pm, and a 5:00 departure time allows us to make sure the house is in check-out condition, with still time to deposit the security deposit check in the bank (that we’ll get back from our landlord).

Saturday, July 23 : We will leave Wisconsin by 9am, travel through Indianapolis by approximately 2pm, and stay the night in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Sunday, July 24 :  We plan to leave Kentucky and enter Tennessee by 8:30am.  We hope to be able to stop along the way and take scenic pictures of the landscape.  We were awed by the beauty of the mountains, and are looking forward to this part of our journey again.  We will spend the night in Lake Park, Georgia.

Monday, July 25 :  Our goal is to arrive in Orlando by 2:30pm.  We have not yet booked the hotel reservations for this night.  Our original intent was to stay at an extended-stay hotel for a week while we finalize our housing plans.  However, Mark and I have narrowed down three apartment complexes that we really like, and one in particular we may be able to move into before August 1st.  If so, this would affect how many nights we need to stay in a hotel, so we are waiting before securing those reservations.

We are really looking forward to the drive down to Florida.  As a family, we love taking road trips:  just driving to a new city within the state that we haven’t been to before with no expectations of what might be there.   We hope to be able to do a little more of it this summer before we leave Wisconsin, but we also have to be mindful of rising gas prices, and the upcoming expenses we will have for the trip down to Florida.

Thanks for following along!

~Jen