Weekend In Orlando: Part 1

Planning and On The Road

The story of this post series begins back in June. Paula was in the initial stages of starting out as a nail stylist for Color Street.

One day she shares with me that the company is having a national conference and that she would be really interested in going. Then she told me it was in Orlando in August.

After considering all the factors involved and waiting for other a few other things to unfold, we made the final decision. We would to drive to Florida so Paula could attend the conference and I could have a couple of days to do whatever I wanted to in Orlando.

In past trips to the Sunshine State, we have traveled the 750+ miles in a single day to get the most out of our vacation time. But this time we decided that we would make the drive in two days.

We left about 9:45AM on Thursday morning. We had planned on leaving a bit earlier but both of us had some trouble sleeping the night before. It was important that we be as rested as possible before getting on the road.

Because of the conference session schedule, we had to make sure we were at our Orlando hotel by 3 o'clock on Friday. This meant we had to travel a little over 500 miles the first day.

We went through Nashville with almost no traffic issues. Soon we were heading toward Chattanooga.

I love driving 1-24 between Nashville and Chattanooga because of the drive through the steep hills near Monteagle. It's also the section where you leave go from Tennessee to Georgia and back to Tennessee. You also change time zones along this stretch.

Soon we were heading down I-75 toward Atlanta.

The only issue our late than expected departure caused in our trip was that we found ourselves in downtown Atlanta in the middle of rush hour.

It took us about 90 minutes to get through but once we did we headed down I-75 toward Macon on our way to Valdosta. 

Along the way my wife, was busy on her phone working on her Color Street Facebook group page, setting up the nail bars some of her customer's agreed to host, and watching training videos.

I was driving down the highway with Paula right next to me working in what was usually just a passenger seat but was now her mobile office space.

We pulled off I-75 and found the Holiday Inn Express hotel in Valdosta about 9PM. After checking in, making a quick run to Walmart for some necessary supplies, and getting something to eat at a Wendy's drive thru it was after 10:30 before we closed the door of room 505 for the night.

This day turned out to be a lot longer than we anticipated but stopping for the night 2/3 of the way to Orlando made the drive a lot easier.

We got up the next day and headed down I-75 once again. It was about 9 when we left. Our day got off to a bit of a rocky start. A la We locked ourselves out of our room while checking out. I had to go down to the lobby and get a spare key so we could get the rest of our stuff out of the room. We still ended up leaving a fan that we had just bought the night before.

Once back on the road we had about 260 miles to get to Orlando. It took us about 4 hours. It was not a bad drive at all despite a light to moderate rain most of the way.

This is where I'll stop for part 1 of this series. In the next post I will share with you the busy weekend my wife had attending the conference. It was a bit exhausting but if you ask her it was well worth it. Come back for the details I'll share in "Weekend In Orland: Part 2".