Spring Break! Time to go wild! Road trips, beaches, cold beverages, and good food. Those are our destinations! After some uncertainty on our departure window (thanks for being so reliable dad), we hit the road on April Fools Day. After a quick vehicle swap (rental Explorer for rental Armada), we made it to our first destination: Charleston, SC, or as dad likes to refer to it Charlotte, NC. Whatever. Similar name, similar state. Regardless of names, I proved to still be the superior navigator on the mean streets of Charleston.

And speaking of streets, what a great set of streets Charleston had. Beautiful buildings, nice people, and fantastic food. We kept to our usual battle rhythm of planning around meals. Food then find some culture or more food (coffee, cocktail, or snack) before the next planned food. We stayed in the heart of the historic downtown area so we had an opportunity to walk to Waterfront Park, White Point Garden, the old City Market (cool building, less cool stuff), and Rainbow Row. As cool as the “popular” attractions were, some of the prettiest parts of the city were buildings tucked away on quiet streets.

We took a day trip out to Sullivans Island to dip our toes in the water. The water was still a bit chilly but the kids could have cared less and spent the whole time running in and out of the surf and using their bodies as shovels in the sand. Of course, since we just happened to be in the neighborhood, we stopped in to The Obstinate Daughter for a fantastic lunch. On the 3rd we filled our bellies with some absolutely phenomenal Central Texas style BBQ at Lewis BBQ then hit the road for Jacksonville, FL.

Jax proved to be a pleasant surprise. We had planned on visiting some good friends of ours but hadn’t looked into much to do outside of just visit. A day at Atlantic Beach, a night at Intuition Brewery, and a couple of great meals in the Five Points neighborhood all made the departure a little sad.