Our First Family Road Trip

Last week we embarked on our longest family road trip to date ... we foresee a lot more in our future! Mark is currently on another Rapid Response Trip for about 3 weeks to Missionary Flights International (MFI), about halfway down the east coast of Florida. Unlike Papua New Guinea, the Beckwith girlies got to come along too.

We drove 1,060 miles from Coshocton, Ohio to Fort Pierce, Florida over three days, arriving on Saturday afternoon. To put it in perspective, it is roughly the same distance from London, England to Rome, Italy or Melbourne to Brisbane in Australia. We shared the drive, just taking it in turns ... while the girls were either being incredibly goofy or snoozing away the miles in the back.

The speed limit in America on the Interstates is generally lower than at home in the UK. One big difference that we had found up until now is that the majority of the time Americans tend to stick to it too. This trip has shown us that the further south you drive the less likely people seem to keep to the limit ... progressively getting faster! We only really travelled on 3 main roads the entire time. Crossing 7 state lines ... Ohio to West Virginia, to Virginia, to North Carolina, to South Carolina, to Georgia, and finally into Florida.

Spring was just beginning to show it’s true colours in Coshocton. We found it interesting to see that the further south we travelled the more advanced ‘spring had sprung’. On arrival in Florida, it was well underway, an entire season in just 3 days!! On the way we drove through tunnels and mountains, over bridges and past many many water towers ... real American landmarks! 

We decided in advance to break our journey in Rock Hill, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. Rock Hill was more of a stop, eat and sleep break ... eating homemade chilli on the floor of our hotel room!

It made days 1 and 3 longer, with a bit of a break in the middle on day 2 with the chance to explore Savannah which was gorgeous. An opportunity to spend time in the ‘South’ ... even if it was just for a few hours! 

The trip went really well, we just took it mile by mile and we didn’t even have to get out our secret weapon of the DVD player to keep the girls amused. Family road trip number one, a success ... it bodes well for the years of travelling to come!!