All good things...

Well, Saturday is here again and that means it's time to say goodbye to the beach and return to Richmond!  Mariah was up at 7, even after our late night, and I was up at 8, to pack up the rest of our gear and get going.  Patty rode home with Jena and they left around 8 so that they could arrive home early. We finished up, locked up, and, along with Zac and Ellie, said goodbye to our lovely beach house at around 10 o'clock.

Zac and Ellie had much further to go than us, having to drive back up to Herndon, Va, so they went ahead and started their trek back home.  We decided to do a little last minute shopping, so we hit up some nearby gift shops on highway 17 and down on the Surfside Beach Pier.

After our shopping was done, Mariah was kind enough to indulge me and we had one more lunch at Fuddruckers before we hit the road.  Yum. :)

We finally got going around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, taking a slightly different route than we used coming down, as I was hoping to avoid some of the heavy traffic that slowed us down so much before.  The rain seemed to follow us the whole way back, clearing up for a little while and then becoming heavy at other times.

We took our first rest stop about halfway through North Carolina and then stopped again right at the Virginia/North Carolina border.  There was some really bad traffic on Interstate 95 in southern NC, but once we were finally in the clear, it was pretty smooth sailing the rest of the way.

The kids did a really awesome job, for such a long drive.  They played with their new souvenir toys for a long time; they each picked a shark head grabber toy like this:

Remember those things? They spent a long time making the sharks talk to each other and picking up things in the car with them.  Then one of the kids would close their eyes while the other would hide their shark amongst all of our stuff and then the first one would try to guess where it was hidden. Once that had run its course, they spent some time playing some new games on their Mobi-go's, which they were very excited about, and then watched Bolt on the iPad, which was a big hit.

 

We stopped and picked up some dinner at a McDonald's in Hopewell and made it home around 8 pm. Our total miles traveled (down, around the beach, and back) was 856 miles.

After we had gotten home, my mom was thoughtful enough to bring us a gallon of milk so that the kids would have some to drink for breakfast the next morning, and the kids had some time to play with 'Nani' while Mariah and I unloaded everything from the van.

Then it was off to bed for the kids while Mariah and I did a bit more unpacking and cleaning up before our bedtime.

All told, I think this was one of our best vacations yet, and everyone had a really fantastic time.  I'd like to give my thanks to everyone who has been following this blog, I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!  If you liked what you saw here and want to be notified the next time the blog is updated, you can follow my blog using the tools in the top right corner of this page.  More information on how to follow me can also be found here.

Until our next adventure...