First Stop

Our first official family vacation began with an overnight stop in Mobile, Alabama.  We woke up at 2:30 am and were on the road by 3:00 in hopes that Garrett would sleep while we drove through the night.  He was wide awake for the first hour and a half taking about "that big one moon" and "go that beach."  Before we knew it he was fast asleep and we were well on our way into Louisiana.  We made very few stops along the way, but we had to drop in on the Duck Dynasty headquarters for an obligatory photo opportunity.

And this was only half of it!

That's when the trouble began.

We were only out of the truck for a few minutes and back on the road when the air conditioner stopped working.  With the windows down I began calling dealerships that could squeeze us in and get us out in a hurry.  Everyone we called said there was no way that they could get us in, or if they could it would be hours before they could start working on it.  We decided to stop at a dealership in Vicksburg, Mississippi and just prayed that they would be able to help us.  Our friends, Jeff and Joleen, stopped with us.  If the dealership couldn't fix our car that day, we were going to put Garrett in with them and drive on in to Mobile with the windows down and have it fixed once we had a place to stay for the night.  Thankfully the dealership was able to have someone look at the air conditioner almost immediately.  Within an hour we were back on the road with cold AC!!

After a very long day (and night) of driving we finally arrived in Mobile.  We stayed at a hotel with a beautiful view of the bay and the USS Alabama that we would be visiting the next day.  We spent the afternoon enjoying a nice dinner and swimming in the hotel pool.

The moon was a beautiful shade of orange!

We actually slept in before packing up and heading out to tour the USS Alabama.  Boy was it a scorcher!  The humidity was out of control!  After touring the battleship and viewing numerous helicopters, tanks, and airplanes (all right up Garrett's alley), the heat began to get the best of him and it was time to call it quits.  We missed touring the submarine, but saw enough of it from afar.

 

 

Garrett fell fast asleep as we began the last two hour stretch into Destin.  He really was the best road trip buddy.  He was content just looking out the window most of the time.  We did borrow a portable DVD player from a friend, and that came in handy the last hour of our drive.  I found tons of cute Pinterest ideas for things to do in the car to keep him busy, but I didn't really need to use any of them.  I felt like if he was content just being with us and taking in the scenery, he didn't need anything else!

Before we knew it we were taking in white sandy beaches and beautiful blue waters!  While the boys unpacked all of our stuff for the next week, Joleen and I took Garrett down to the beach for his first glimpse at the biggest outdoor sandbox he'd ever seen.  I regret not taking the video camera with us to capture this experience, but the pure joy he had as his toes dug into the sand and the smile that spread across his face as he dug his little heart out was enough for me!