Our vacation departure day finally arrived, and it was time to make the long drive down to Port St. Lucie, Florida, for our overnight stop on the way to Ft. Lauderdale. We got a good nights sleep and woke up around 7:00 AM to finish our packing and get everything ready for the trip. We were not scheduled to leave the house until about 10:30 AM to drive to the Columbia Airport to pick up our rental car.
We got ready and were waiting on Mom to arrive to be our chauffeur to the airport. Well, actually I was going to drive us to the airport in mom’s car, and she was just driving home after dropping us off.
We made some turkey sandwiches to take with us in the car so we did not have to stop for lunch on the way since we were not leaving the airport until about 11:00 AM. The time was selected so that we could return the rental car to the Ft. Lauderdale airport by 11:00 AM on Sunday, and only have the car for a single day’s rental. The cost for the car is about $101 for the single day, and I had called to find out what the hourly rate was in case we were late getting the car returned. The person I talked with said that if we were more than an hour late, we would be charged another day’s rental, ouch. So, we needed to make sure we could get the car back within 24 hours from the time we rented it today.
Packing Our Luggage At The Columbia Airport
We arrived at the airport in Columbia about 10:45 AM, and by 11:05 AM, we were heading out to the interstate in our silver Hyundai Sonata. The traffic on I-26 was fairly heavy, but when we got to I-95, it was much better in the southbound direction. For some reason, traffic was extremely heavy going northbound, either from spring break or snow birds heading back home from Florida, or both, but it was as heavy as we have seen on many holidays.
When we got to the Georgia border, traffic was unbelievably heavy going northbound, it was just about at a standstill for several miles into Georgia, mainly due to the reduction in lanes in South Carolina versus Georgia. Good thing we were heading south.
We made our first pit stop for gas and personal relief at Exit 1 in Georgia, right before getting into Florida. We were quite amazed that we only used 7 gallons of gas getting there, much better than we would get in any of our older, less efficient SUV vehicles.
We took the bypass around Jacksonville, and found out that there was a new section of I-295 at the southern end, which got us much farther south than we had been used to when we lived there.
The traffic was a little more heavy between Jacksonville and Daytona, but after most of the traffic exited for Orlando via I-4, it was much better. We hit a little more traffic around Melbourne, Florida, but overall, it was a nice drive after passing Daytona.
Dinner at Chili’s
We arrived at out hotel, a Residence Inn, at about 6:20 PM. Stephanie was attempting to watch the South Carolina men’s basketball tournament game via streaming on her phone, but the cell signal was not that great, and it was being interrupted often. Our plan was to check in and then head to the nearby Chili’s to sit in their bar and watch the game while enjoying some 2 for 1 beers and having a bite to eat for dinner.
We got a table in the bar, but the game was almost to halftime by the time we arrived and were seated. The game was exciting, but South Carolina came up a little short and did not win.
Our Hotel Room at the Residence Inn
We headed back to our hotel to relax. We are going to Mass tomorrow at 6:15 AM so we can come back to the hotel, eat some breakfast at the included buffet, and get on the road to Ft. Lauderdale by about 8:30 AM. That will mean an early wake up at 5:15 AM tomorrow morning. Overall, it was a lot of driving, but we made it safely.