March 12: Chrysler Town and Country

Well, our Florida vacation finally arrived! My family has waited all year for this day to come, now it's here and all hell would, of course, break loose. The morning scramble to make sure we have everything we need packed, the drive down to my in-laws home where our shuttle chariot to the airport awaited us, and the whole security/gate/airplane adventure that is always much more adventurous with the kids. Thankfully, we have a cousin staying at our house while we're gone to secure the homestead and care for the pets in our absence. So, that piece was already accounted for in the vacation plan. I can say, however, things went pretty smoothly and we soon touched down in the F-L-A. It's at that point when things got interesting. I don't know how many of you have traveled recently, but the price tag to rent a vehicle for a duration even as short as a week is astronomical. And, we are traveling with 7 total, so we had 2 goals in our rental plan: fit all of us in one vehicle and be cost-effective. As you might expect, we faced somewhat of a challenge to meet them both. I had reserved a mini-van online about 3 weeks past from Enterprise, but just to be safe I had also rented a Ford Taurus; in case we all didn't fit into the mini-van. So, when we got to the counter, we had our choice of an older Dodge Grand Caravan or brand new Chrysler Town and Country; only about 350 miles on her! Well, I'm no genius, but this one was pretty much a no-brainer. And, the lady working the rental counter assured us we could get 7 plus luggage comfortably into the Town and Country. Turns out, the 7 was the absolute truth, as was the luggage. The "comfortably", however, was a bit of an exaggeration. Once we located the vehicle in the lot, it took us about 20 minutes to try and find the best way in which to fit everything. Luckily, this particular vehicle has Stowaway seating or "floor bins" as Chrysler calls them, which means there is a trap-door kind of thing in the floor behind the front seats in which you can store baggage. That helped immensely. But, my Wife and Sister-in-law still had to squeeze one large piece of luggage between their seats in the middle row and in front of them; making their ride anything but "comfortably". On top of all of that, we flew into Tampa even though we are staying in Sarasota in order to save money on our airfare. After a 2.5 hour flight in the smallest plane ever made by Spirit airlines, and a 1-hr. drive to Sarasota in a mini-van loaded with people and luggage, all of use we're ready to stretch, stand and straighten out for as long as possible. Unfortunately, we were all hungry by this time, so it was off to dinner for another sitting event. At that point, I would have given anything for a restaurant that offered standing room only.