With full hearts, and energized spirits, we left Great Grandma Kirk's house (read about that visit here), and began the final leg of our journey to the beach!
Day 4: 285 miles. 5 hours 37 minutes drive time. 7 hours 45 minutes drive time.
Purcellville, VA to Alexandria, VA to Sandbridge, VA (THE BEACH!)
We got onto I-95 with high hopes of a good last day of driving. We had only 4 hours drive time to the beach from Great Grandma's house....or so we thought.
Then we ran into traffic. So. Much. Traffic.
Luckily, there was an HOV lane we could take...
but ohh (insert choice swear word here), we completely missed the HOV entrance.
So there we were, in heavy traffic, going very slowly, watching the cars in the HOV lane zoom by, and realizing the red on the GPS went on for many...
...many more miles.
That's when I started to snap at my husband and everybody else in the car. My husband joined in, and so did the kids. I could only imagine how this looked from the perspective of the cars around us. Then I noticed the car next to us with parents and 3 kids in the back seat who were obviously also traveling somewhere. Mom and Dad were yelling. An older kid in the back was screaming. Mom was leaning over the middle console trying to calm backward facing baby and Dad was obviously frustrated as he was trying to navigate the 3 lanes of barely moving traffic to pull over. Wow, look at that family! Sheesh, they should really cool it or they are going to crash that car. Seriously, how can they possibly think all that snapping and anger is helping their situation?? Good thing we aren't like that...Oh, wait....we are EXACTLY like that! (insert choice swear word here once more). Well, at least I can take comfort in the fact that we aren't the only family who loses it sometimes more times than I care to admit.
FINALLY, we were moving at a good pace again, but our original easy 4 hour drive time to the beach ended up taking over 6 hours. Adding over 2 hours to that drive would have been frustrating on any road trip, but on the fourth day of driving, after 1640 miles already, on the very last leg to our destination for the rest of the week, this was a nightmare.
In the end, we DID make it to the beach that evening with a promise to the kids that they wouldn't have to get in the carseat again for a week!
We didn't even care that it was raining when we arrived because we were just happy to make it there! Plus, we knew we'd have many sunny, fun on the beach days coming up. The traffic was far behind us so instead of feeling overwhelmed by car horns, screeching tires, and sarcasm, we were able to relax to the sound of the ocean waves and laughter! So. Blessed.
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