Jenn's Rainy Trip - Day 1

**BamaJenn** · 09-26-2011, 03:30 PM

Pre-Trip Report

As we planned, I worked from home on Monday the 19th so while I was stuck in meetings, Bill and the teenagers could be working on loading up the cars and getting all of the little "before we leave" stuff done. The goal was to get on the road by no later than 4:00 and we definitely managed that!

My last meeting of the day ended at 3:00 so, after a quick chat with the boss, I logged off right after and joined the family at the cars to head out. We got 2 feet out of the drive way and I looked up in my rear view mirror to see Bill's car was parked in front of our house and he and Tim were wandering around it and to and from the front door. I waited a few minutes and then backed up to see what was going on. Apparently on the 10 foot walk from the door to the car, Tim ended up somehow attacked by fire ants. Fantasic! What a way to start...

Finally around 3:30ish we were on the road. We had reservations at the Travelodge in Jax and the goal was to get there before 11:00 if at all possible. After a stop for gas and food, we ended up arriving at the hotel around 10:00. We were exhausted and Aaron hadn't napped at all so we were excited to get into a nice clean room and get some rest before it was time to head out the next morning.

It's good to wish right? So... first... the hotel didn't have my reservation from when I made it on Priceline back in May. They spent 15 minutes flipping page by page through a binder to see where it had gone with no luck. Finally the girl just checked us in at the rate we were promised (I was smart and had a copy of the reservation to show all the info).

After the irritation I was even more ready for some sleep so... off to the room we went. So let's start with the fact that this is Jacksonville, FL... where even at this time of night it's insanely humid and was obviously in the high 80's all day. So you'd think to keep the rooms from being nasty they'd be air conditioned. NOPE! Why turn on A/C in rooms that aren't being used? So we walk in to a sticky nasty warm room to start the night. Then we look down to realize we have two full beds and a soaking wet floor. Why? Well it had been raining all night and there was a huge space under the door from which the sidewalk water was seeping in. At least there's a fridge! Oh wait... it's full of black mold down around the drain. Lovely. Oh and those lovely dirty footprints on the WALL!!??!! *sigh* Definitely filling out a complaint report through Priceline obviously. It didn't matter though, we had to sleep, so we climbed into the incredibly uncomfortable beds and eventually just crashed out of exhaustion.