Vacation Day 9

We all started for home very early this morning. Paul, Dad, Rudy and I were on the road by 6:20am, Chris, Patti, Max and Lucy left a few minutes before us. We stopped almost immediately to get Dad and Paul some coffee. Then a few hours into the trip we stopped at a drive thru for breakfast - we were too afraid that we'd get caught in traffic if we stopped for any length of time. We also took a brief break at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel to stretch our legs, use the bathroom, get Rudy dressed, and look out over the bay. We hit no traffic and made great time. Too great, actually. We greatly overestimated our travel time. We made reservation for a late ferry and ended up nearing the terminal about 6 hours early. So I called and moved our reservation to an earlier time, but it was around 11:45 and the only ferry that had space was the 3:30 boat. We decided to go straight to the ferry and hope we would be able to catch an earlier one if someone didn't show up. We arrived at the ferry around 12:15 and were told it was too early to check in. So we left and had lunch, drove around a little and came back. At that point it was around 1:15. We were able to check in and were 5th in line to get on the 2:45 ferry. Fortunately there are some things to do at the terminal so Rudy played on the playground, watched a boat leave, had a snack, and 'played' video games. Finally they started boarding for the 2:45 ferry. We sat in our car and hoped we'd make it. There ended up being room for about 8 extra cars so we made it on and started our next to last leg home. While on the ferry I got a message saying Chris and Patti had just made it home. Once we got off the ferry and were driving our last 45 minutes home, we heard that Bill & Renee made it home. We dropped dad off just around 5:00 and were home a few minutes later. Rudy fell asleep on the way home from the ferry so we were able to unload the car without his help. We were the last to arrive but if you don't count the 2 1/2 hours we had to wait for a ferry, it took us a total of 8 1/2 hours to get home. Not bad at all.
We are sad that vacation is over and we have to go back to work on Tuesday but it is nice to be in our own house and I am looking forward to my own shower and bed tonight! Now we need to start planning for next year!