3 Things to Consider Before You take that Road Trip From New York to Orlando and Back
Yes, I did it. I just took a deep breath, went ahead and did it. After months of planning, we packed the car with a 7 year old and his grandmother and headed from New York City straight down I-95 South to Orlando and back.
And boy oh boy did I learn a lot from this experience. I have always, I mean always loved a road trip. I had not taken a road trip this distance since 2001, when I piled in a car with my friends and headed to South Beach.
Years later, I was about to hit the road again and wanted to plan another ambitious, yes this was ambitious for this little group, family road trip to Orlando. Why was this ambitious? Well our little guy rather unpredictably experiences car sickness, my mom needs frequent rest breaks and we just had not taken a road trip since our May 2018 ride down to Washington, D.C.. Yes, we were very much out of road trip practice.
Could we really do this? The answer was yes and in retrospect we learned a lot about how to do this and how not to do this. Would I do this again. Yes. Yes I would, with a few adjustments…
First things first, planning. It always comes down to planning for me so, let’s start there. Here are my tips for planning your long distance road trip and more specifically, your trip from the northeast to Florida and back.
Planning your trip
Here are the three things that I considered for this trip, what we did and what I’d do differently.
First, should we drive straight through to Orlando?
After doing my research, my gut said, plan an overnight on the way down so that we will arrive at our final destination reasonably well rested and ready to go. However, what I did instead was put it to a family vote and my inclination to build in a stop was vetoed.
We now all know better and would welcome a stop on the way down to Orlando. The drivers could use a serious break and even the passengers could have done with a significant stretch of time out of the car.
Second, where should we stop along the way?
This was the most worrying thing for me initially. How often would we stop and where would we stop? Our goal on the way down was to make it from our house to Virginia before we needed our first stop. This part of the plan worked well and in fact was our longest stretch of drive time during the trip. From there on we stopped every three hours or so for bathroom and gas breaks.
The one thing I did learn was once you leave the Washington D.C. area your rest stops are not full service and will not have a gas station attached. This matters because you will not be able to directly tie your bathroom and gas breaks together unless you’re willing to take your bathroom break at the gas station. We were not willing to do this.
I’ve been able to pull together a list of rest stops that you’ll find along the way in both directions and have them available to you here.
Third, how should we treat the trip home? Amtrak? A stop on the way home?
Unlike the trip down, we were all in agreement before we started our journey that we should stop on the way home. Washington, D.C. was the chosen location for our stop. The question was, should we drive to D.C. or take Amtrak’s Auto Train® home.
In retrospect, I would take Auto Train® to the Lorton Virginia stop and either travel directly home from there or visit Washington, D.C. The thing I learned is that you should book Auto Train®, no matter where you choose to sit early. The longer you wait the price increases and depending on how much you are willing to spend, you will get priced out.
For those who are familiar with cruise pricing it works much the same. The least expensive prices are farther out and the closer you get to the travel date the pricier the fare becomes.
Though we weren’t in the car for as long as on the way down (about 12 hours) it was still a rough trip because our little guy suffered multiple bouts of car sickness, we stopped multiple times and unexpectedly ran into a rain storm. All of which was a recipe for fatigue and crankiness that I wouldn’t want to repeat.
The Trip
How long did it take?
Much longer than any of us would have liked or initially expected. We left our home around midnight on Friday and arrived at our Airbnb around 10:30 pm Saturday evening. All totaled we spent approximately 22 hours in the car. Did I expect it to take this long? No, I did not. I thought we would have been at our home away from home by 7:30 pm - 8:00pm.
What added time to our trip you ask? The stops…
Where did we stop?
Everywhere. Every…Last…Rest…Stop. Or at least it felt like it.
We stopped in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Yep, every state past Maryland.
As I mentioned, our longest stretch was from our home to Virginia where we stopped to stretch our legs, take a bathroom break and gas up.
Here is where it matters what type of stop you’d like to have. As noted once you leave the your rest stop and your bathroom stop become separate activities. You will have to leave the main roadway to travel to a gas station and restaurants.
For the stops we made we found that the gas stations were within a mile or so (sometimes right off of the highway) along with the fast food options that you would expect, McDonalds and the like. If you’re feeling fancy a Cracker Barrel was never hard to find.
We found the rest stops generally speaking to be clean and comfortable. Some were more visually interesting than others. It’s also worth noting that the state Welcome Centers were all around larger and had the most restrooms, vending options and information areas. We found the Georgia Welcome Center was the most interesting and had the best photo ops.
The Florida Welcome Center, is a must stop if you plan on traveling via toll roads during your stay. We were able to pick up a SunPass here for our side trips during our stay. While we arrived after it closed, I’ve read that they do have complementary juice samples which is something I hope we get to try on our next trip.
Here also, is where the rest stop list came in really very handy. I was easily able to tell based upon the exit that was coming up exactly which exit we’d find the next rest stop. This was super helpful because I could ask the family if they wanted to stop or if we could keep going to the next.
Four Things I Would do Differently on our Next Road Trip
No matter where we’re headed on our next road trip, I’d keep these things in mind:
Stay overnight. If we’re doing a roundtrip to Florida, plan in an extra 2 nights. One to stop over on the way down and the other for the way back. Everyone in the car will thank you
Rest up. Unadvisedly, my husband and I did not get the best nights rest before our trip. Life really happened in the hours before we left and things cropped up that we had to handle. That said, if I were to do it all over again I’d make sure that one of us had a full nights rest while the other handled the last minute running around
Stop Less. If at all possible, plan your rest stops. While things don’t always go as planned, I would try to drop at least one rest stop in each direction
Don’t over pack. We had a boat load of road trip games for our son and surprises for him to open along the way to keep him entertained. We did not need all of those toys and games. He slept most of the way down and loved License Plate Bingo the best when he was awake
One last thing, what about food?
Due to COVID-19, we decided not to sit and eat in restaurants along the way. While this helped us to mitigate our exposure to the virus, for this little group who was already making more stops than planned we were also able to save some much needed time along the way.
Would I do this differently in the future? Perhaps. There are many factors that would go into that decision such as our little guys car sickness. I’ve found that getting him to the final destination sooner rather than later at the moment seems to work best for him.
The other consideration is, if we’re overnighting before arriving at our destination (and yes, we will be overnighting), I’d rather sit and have nice meal at the end of the travel day as part of the relax wind down process rather than stopping for a sit down meal along the way.
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