Key Largo – 10 days of fun on the road.

Key Largo

The decision was made in late March to celebrate Kathy’s oldest daughters 30th birthday some place warm, destination Key Largo! Kelsea and Lindsey planned to fly in from Milwaukee. Kathy and I decided it would be fun to make this into a road trip. A 10 day road trip! This journey will be chronicled over the next several blog posts.

It begins

It was very fitting after living thru what seemed to be one of Ohio’s longest winters in recent memory  that April 19th, the day we left our home in Ohio it would be snowing. The snow and sleet would continue to follow us all the way down I-77 thru West Virginia and Virginia. We decided to stop at Tamarack West Virginia for a bite of lunch. The food always seems good and the artwork is amazing.  After our short break it was back on the road. After dropping out of the Virginia mountains into North Carolina it was almost as if we had driven into the Land of Oz. The sun was shining, the trees were in full leaf and the flowers were blooming. The corn in the farmers fields was even standing several inches tall. Such a change in 6 hours! It was almost magical.

Our goal for the first night was Charlotte North Carolina where we were invited to have dinner and spend the night with our good friends the O’Connor’s. John and Christine had recently moved to Charlotte from the Columbus area. We were looking forward to getting to spend some time with them. It was a lovely evening with a wonderful meal, cocktails, and fun conversation. The following morning they served us a delicious breakfast before we headed down the road to our next destination for the night in Ormond Beach Florida.

Day 2 Key Largo gets closer

Lotus Hotel

Planning our trip we tried to break it up into manageable drives for each day. Day two was going to be one our longer days in the car. At nearly 500 miles that proved to be the case. Having never been to Florida myself, I wasn’t sure what to expect. My first impression, it’s flat! Rolling into Ormond Beach we both found ourselves exhausted.  We stayed at a cute boutique hotel right on the beach called the Lotus Hotel. The room was nice and the view was lovely. We were both tired so we walked about a half mile down the street to a popular place called Riptides Raw Bar. We split a Grouper dish the waiter recommended and headed back to our room to get ready for the next leg of our journey. Tomorrow – Key Largo or bust! To be continued…

More Reading

The second installment of this series can be read here: Our Florida Keys Road Trip Continues. As always please feel free to leave your comments below. We love hearing from our readers!

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