Roadtripping to Florida and Our First Day Exploring

Well, we made it!  After many months of saying that we were headed down from Jersey to Florida, we are finally here.  We started our drive Saturday morning and arrived in the afternoon yesterday to our cute little furnished rental home in Dunedin, just north of Tampa and Clearwater.  Our trip was pretty uneventful (thankfully!)  and we are settling in nicely.  We have already started checking out some areas and getting ourselves ready for house shopping.

I didn't take too many pictures of our trip down but here are the few that I did manage to snap.

Starting out first thing Saturday morning after packing up our U-Haul.  Fresh faced and chipper!  See ya later Jersey, we actually did really enjoy you!

Breakfast... a Nutella filled strawberry donut from Dough, probably my last one for a very long time
:(

My great little travel buddy.  She was so fantastic the whole trip.

Our first night we stopped just north of Richmond, Virginia for the night.  Across from our hotel was Aunt Sarah's pancake house.  We had this amazing southern dinner of Chicken and Waffles and steak and eggs and had some great entertainment playing some old country and banjo songs.

Day two we were up and out the door bright and early again.  We had plans to try to stop in Savannah for the evening so we had the hammer down!  We drove by the Philip Morris headquarters.  They have this giant cigarette stack outside.  Great advertising.

It started to rain just as we were hitting North Carolina, so my picture of the state sign is pretty blurry but you get the idea.  This was my first time in both North and South Carolina.  Knocked another two states off my list on this trip!

Pretty traveler still being so good.

The first Palm Tree we saw on our drive!  At the South Carolina Visitor Center.  I missed my palm trees!

We arrived in Savannah in the late afternoon and got checked into our hotel then headed out to meet up with Zach and Catherine.  Zach has been one of Josh's best friends for years so we get together with them whenever we have the chance.  Sunday happened to be their first day out without the their six week old baby, so they were ready for an adult evening!  We met at City Market and went down to River Street for some drinks and dinner.  We absolutely LOVE Savannah and the downtown area of the city so we were in our glory.  We had a great meal, in the middle of a flash flood rainstorm and then went back to the hotel for another early night.

Day 3, and our last day!  Not such a bad drive when you consider how many states we had to go through!

I have been looking for these special edition Ruffles All Dressed Chips for like two months!  They don't have All Dressed Chips in the US and I guess since they are the top flavor in Canada Ruffles decided to try to introduce them down here.  I finally found them at a Shell Station in Southern Georgia and then again at the Publix grocery store down the street from our rental home.

Finally Florida!  Four more hours to go!

And we made it!  When we got in, we found this cute little set up from our land lady.  SO cute.

Our bedroom looking on to the patio area.

Dining room.

Living room.

We even have an orange tree!  I have always dreamed of having an orange tree!

And since it is Florida, we have about 4000 little pet geckos in our yard.

The screened in patio.  So lovely!  We all love it!

We went for a walk after we got in.  We are just a couple minute walk from the Pinellas Trail, a trail that runs through the entire Pinellas County.  This is just behind the golf course we are across from.

We are also in walking distance from a Frenchy's Restaurant.  There are several of these in the St. Pete's/ Clearwater area and they are so good!  Fresh seafood and tons of other great food and they always have live music.

This is a pumpkin spice colada.  I think it was even better than it sounds.

My grilled avocados stuffed with Tuna Poke.  Amazing!  It was a pretty early night again after that.  Time to get caught up on sleep!  I even got a stupid cold sore from being run down the last few days. Blech.

Somebody loves being off the road and in a nice spacious house!

We had to return the U-Haul first thing in the morning and once we had returned it we decided to take a cruise out to the Causeway and stop at a couple beaches.  Such a hot day!  Like 87F feels like 94F.  apparently this is extra hot for this time of year.  The Gulf felt like bath water.

The cutest little tufted Seagulls looking down on to Indian Shores Beach.

A Heron and some Egrets waiting for this fisherman to catch something.

Miles of quiet white sand beaches <3

A jellyfish!

After spending a bit too much time on the beach (we are both slightly red) we stopped in at the Publix (finally an amazing grocery store after having pretty terrible ones in JC and NYC) for a few things to last us the next couple months.  I love grocery shopping so I was happy as a clam.

After unpacking at home, and looking at some houses online, we went out to start grilling some kabobs and corn in the yard and I found this beautiful bunch of flowers growing through the fence from the neighbors yard.  I'm totally bringing them inside tomorrow!

We also took Smudge out to explore the yard.  It was here first time in the real outdoors in over a year and she was loving it.   She got to meet our squirrel friend, a bird and lots of geckos and roll around in the dirt and grass.  So excited for her to get out and get some fresh air and exercise.

Well thats our trip down and our first day here.  Now its just time to wait for some visitors!  We have lots of room and there is so much to do!  Wish us luck in our house hunting which gets hardcore tomorrow!