And last night I thought this story had pretty much ended. Ha! Look what I woke up to this morning …

Whaaaaat? WTH? Once we were docked Bob got on the phone to call Southwest to find out what’s going on. Well, we’ve been in our bubble for the last two weeks. Haven’t watched any kind of TV other than the navigation channel to see where we were and to check our account. So who knew there was a big storm out on the eastern coast called Riley? Not us! Seems the winds were so bad flights all up and down the eastern seaboard were being affected. We called Sarah to see if they knew. They didn’t. Bob finally gets through to someone at Southwest and gets us booked on the only other flight that day – at 4:30.

In the meantime, we lug our bags all the way down to deck 5 and wait (with all the others wanting to be first off the ship) for the all clear to disembark. As we’re discussing the possibility of the 4:30 flight being canceled Sarah says, “We could just rent a car and drive home.” I had a high wind advisory alert on my phone that didn’t end until 6am the next morning. So the likelihood that afternoon flight would be canceled was pretty dang good. They did have a 6am flight out the next morning but we’d have to find a hotel room and it’s spring break. Not sure how that would’ve worked out. Sarah found a van with Alamo for $160 one way rental. We made an executive decision and canceled our flights and rented the van. Talk about being flexible.

The map said it was about 13-1/2 hours from Ft. Lauderdale to Virginia Beach. While that makes for a long day we should make it home about the same time as if we took the 4:30 flight. In the end it was a little longer than that but we made it safe and sound. Sarah drove until it got dark and DE brought it on home. That was a first for Bob and me – we’d never driven to or from Florida, especially in the same day. Even though I wasn’t ready to get off the ship and get back to reality, it’s good to be home.

No more “Next day …” 😦