Our long awaited vacation south toward sunshine and warmer weather was finally upon us and we couldn’t wait to get on the road!  When we pulled out of the driveway at 3:10am, it was 30° and we couldn’t help but wonder how much warmer it might get the further south we got.  The forecast for Daytona Beach, Florida called for high 70° temperatures, but, it was pretty hard to believe that in a few hours we’d be shedding our winter coats for tank tops!

During the next few hours, we were treated to a beautiful sunrise over Richmond, VA and light traffic conditions as we passed through state after state on our journey south.

At 3:25pm, we crossed into Florida and were immediately met with warmer temperatures and a feeling of excitement that  vacation had really started!

Our plans for this trip were really loose and we had planned to try to make it to Daytona Beach on Sunday, despite not having any hotel reservations, so we could at least enjoy the sun, sand and water on our first night in Florida.  It didn’t hurt that it was supposedly 82° in Daytona Beach, either!  We were pretty pleased to find out that the weather was right and it really was WARM in Daytona Beach!  We found a decent hotel in Daytona Beach Shores on Priceline while we were driving and decided that grab some food before heading to the hotel.  Josh remembered eating at a restaurant on a pier on the water years ago but couldn’t remember the name of it.  Thanks to the assist from Google, we found it and it was called Crabby Joe’s.  The view from the restaurant, set high atop a pier over the Atlantic Ocean was pretty perfect, the food was great and it was a pretty perfect way to end our first night of our southern vacation.