2017 Florida Spring Break Trip

Our 2017 family trip was almost the trip that wasn't. What originally started as an idea to go to an all-inclusive Mexican resort was put on hold due to Kyle contracting Mono! It wasn't until the weekend before Spring Break that we received the "all-clear" from Kyle that we could do anything for vacation. So we decided to hop in the van and drive to Florida; we only had two nights booked for a place on the beach and the rest we were just going to "wing".

Our journey took us south through South Carolina to knock off one of the few states that Tim has not yet visited. Our journey consisted of a coastal tour of Florida that looked like this covering about 3,400 miles:

We bee-lined it pretty much to Cocoa Beach for our first night…yes…first night. We do have the advantage of having a son (Kyle) who doesn't seem to sleep so he took the overnight driving shift!Cocoa Beach was the first place we got to walk on the sand. Funny enough…we did go to church in Cocoa Beach on Sunday morning and had a Larry McCarren sighting there!

Sunday morning we knocked off one of Tim's must-see: The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. We did spend the better part of the day there which was probably too long for the boys but not quite long enough for Tim. Oh well…perhaps Rox and Tim will return another day

After the tour at the Space Center, we hit the road again headed to visit South Beach where LeBron and Dewayne Wade 'brought their talents'. We got into Miami quite late and quickly were introduced to how expensive it was there..especially the parking. Our hotel was right on the beach in what they refer to as mid-beach but parking was still $38 per day. The problem is that the 'day' starts and ends at midnight so we messed around and finally parked the van in a parking structure just after midnight which sealed our decision to spend the entire day of Monday on the beach. That turned out to be a great decision because it was the nicest day we had the entire vacation – blue sky, sunny…87 degrees! The beach was packed with college spring breakers but it is gorgeous. I would love to go there again some day. Roxanne and Tim took a long stroll along the beach all the way to the south end of the island. I think everyone (except Roxanne with her naturally dark skin) got sunburned! Erik was upset with Kyle because his assistance in applying sun screen left Erik with spots over his back. Kyle missed the area around his right eye which left him looking like a boxer who took a punch directly in the eye socket! The beach gave us a chance to do a lot of people watching. Roxanne laughed that her swimming suit was a bit out of style and took lots of photos of women in their Brazilian cut suites (the boys, of course, never noticed! </sarcasm>)

At 4:30pm we drove out of Miami with the rush hour. Original plan was to check out Key Largo and a few miles of the Keys & the Everglades National Park as we head to the Gulf side of Florida, but with cold weather coming in we decided to take Hwy 41 into Naples. The Air boat ride in the Everglades will remain on a future bucket list too.

At that point we began our trek up the Gulf side and made stops along the way at Naples Beach where we grabbed about 2 hours of beautiful sunshine. The waves were large even having a few surfers out. Roxanne wanted desparately to get us to go boogie board with her but she had no takers.

You think that we'd have lots of good food and restaurant stories but this one is about Wendy's! We drove up to Fort Myers where stayed at a Travelodge. On the way we stopped at a Wendy's which the boys kept commenting on the entire trip. While we were there, the manager stopped by our table and we had a nice talk with. He had just been to the LSU versus Wisconsin Badger football game at Lambeau field and enjoyed telling us about his experience. As it turns out, the manager works for Junior Bridgeman who used to play for the Bucks. Junior is now like the #3 wealthiest ex-pro athletes owning more than 300+ franchised 300+ Wendy's / Chili's restaraunts. He gave us tags for free Junior Frosty's for the rest of 2017 which we are still enjoying!

After that we drove to Fort Myers Beach and hung out at a very nice, quite little beach. We thought the sand there was powder compared to Naples and enjoyed the cheap $2.50/hour parking as opposed to the $10/hour parking in Daytona! The boys were enjoying laying on the beach while Roxanne took a stroll. The boys were laughing about how mom must have lassoed someone into a conversation on the beach but as it turns out, Roxanne was picking up sea shells when someone called out her name. Terry & Lois Vandermause (Brussel's people) vacation along that beach; we spent a great evening having dinner with them at Doc Ford's for great seafood and lots of Yuengling beers!

With the NCAA tournament starting we were up late watching basketball and thus were in no hurry to leave the next day. We were then onto St. Pete Beach which is where we had our only reservations for the entire trip – 2 nights on the beach at a Howard Johnsons immediately on the beach. Roxanne did talk us into stopping at Siesta Key Beach which has been voted on the best beaches in the U.S. We did enjoy it! – it had free parking, a nice clean beach house, restroom and snack area. After that we drove through Sarasota and Braedenton on our way to St. Pete Beach just outside St. Petersburg (actually parked at hotel and never checked out St. Petersburg- we needed a day without driving!) . Unfortunately our two days on the beach were the coldest days of the week with temps getting down to the low 40s at night and maybe 60 during the day. We did spend time on beachside bar watching NCAA basketball games like UofMinnesota game!

Had a few beers for Happy Hour (11am - 6pm -$2.75 for 12 oz beer at our bar on the beach called the Toasted Monkey. Boys were happy with the 1/2# Burger & fries ($10). We started watching games at 4pm where Minnesota (5 seed) lost to Middle Tennesse State (a #12 seed) (NOT good) but also watched Wisconsin (#8 seed) beat Virginia Tech.(a #9 seed) which was good!

Our trip for home started early on St. Patrick's Day but we had a slight delay with a flat tire in the van. Thankfully we had an air pump along but only after we returned to Wisconsin did we learn that our rim was cracked and the tire as loosing air the entire way! Our goal for the day was to make it 11 hours to Murfreesboro, TN which happens to be the home of Middle Tennessee State where Michael Sawaski attends. We did meet up with Michael at a Green Bay Packer sports bar called the Scoreboard Bar Y Grill in Nashville. Our goal was to get to the bar in time to watch the Marquette versus South Carolina game which we did but unfortunately Marquette lost! The bar (and hotel we stayed at) turned out to be directly across the street from the hotel that Roxanne's parents were staying which made meeting them for breakfast the next morning quite convenient. Erik and Michael took Lift (Uber competitor) ride to Broadway in Nashville (near Vanderbilt) to go to famous bars with Rachel Lauterbach & her college roommates who were also driving home from spring break.

We did manage to stop at a restaurant in time to watch the Badgers (8 seed) pull out an upset victory over Villanova 65-62 to get them in the final 16. On our drive, we also streamed the Xavier High School boys state championship basketball game against Prescott to win the Division 3 title.

At 7:30pm (and 43 degrees) on Saturday, we dropped Erik back off at Marquette University and we headed back home to Appleton. We got back to Appleton at 9pm on March 18th (35 degrees) after logging 3546 miles in a van down to Miami and back. We have lots of good memories from a weeklong family vacation.