Best Family-Friendly and Budget-Friendly Trip to Florida

My best trip is when we went to Florida a couple of summers ago as a family. We drove down to Florida from Ohio with three young children; the youngest was almost five months old and still nursing.

You may wonder how in the world is this my best vacation - shouldn't best vacations be saved for trips without kids and to places like the Caribbean, Hawaii, or an Alaskan cruise?? However, a vacation, even a family vacation is all about relaxing, changing the pace of the daily grind, and having fun before the doldrums of the every day settle in once you return home. The kids, as much as the adults, needed this time away.

What I liked about the trip was that we were anticipating new places to see with the kids and doing activities that we normally wouldn't do in Ohio (like boating on the Intercoastal Waters!) and visiting people we haven't seen in months (family in Florida and friends in Kentucky). Maybe I liked this vacation best as we planned specific activities to do with the kids but also built in times for naps and taking it easy. I also could enjoy the trip as I did not have to worry about working while my family was having fun at the beach. Granted there were moments of over-tiredness and stress but the overall atmosphere seemed much more relax than the atmosphere at home as we went about our daily grind.

We planned for the long car trip, getting a good part of the day's driving between 4 AM and 8 AM. Then we would stop for breakfast and head out until the next break about an hour and a half to two hours later. We had strategically picked cities that may have interesting things to do. For example, we stopped in Sweetwater, TN, at a duck park and fed many water-fowled friends pieces of Teddy Grahams. The ducks and geese decided they liked the graham cracker treats and tried to follow-us back to the van! On the way back, we planned on stopping for breakfast at an old friend's house in Kentucky to visit with her family.

On the way there, we spent some time in Chattanooga, TN. We went to the local aquarium, which had a penguin exhibit and a large shark exhibit. We also stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel and ate pizza in a train car! This was a nice break, making it seem like we weren't in a mad dash to get to Florida in record time.

While in Florida, we visited with my sister's family and took advantage of museums and zoos where we got reciprocal membership services (free admission or half-price). The kids' favorite place was the St. Petersburg Great Explorations Children's Musuem where they got to climb a tree house, pretend to be firefighters and learned about nutrition and safety. One afternoon, my sister's family rented a boat, and the kids loved speeding across the waters and seeing dolphins swim near by.

We stayed in a condo at the Bay and Beach Club that we rented for roughly $1,000 for one week and because we needed to stay a little extra longer, we also stayed at the Holiday Inn in Clearwater, FL. What was nice about the condo is that it was fairly child-friendly with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a small kitchen and dining table. This made it possible for us to make many meals in the condo and not have to spend much on food. We had pre-shipped some items through Tastefully Simple to my sister's home that we picked up once we arrived and then picked up a few groceries and other items at a local store. The condo also had a washer and dryer that made it nice to do laundry and not have to pack as much.

We had so much fun that we hope to recreate the trip in the next year or two as we look to travel to Florida with the family over the children's spring break. We may try to find some other locations to stop along the way and we may try to squeeze in a day-trip to Orlando. Whichever we choose, the goal will be to have fun and enjoy the change from the day-to-day.