Hit the road!

OK, I am one-and-half excruciating days of work away from Spring Break!

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks...oh wait, I am the teacher. (Oh well! We teachers love Spring Break just as much as our students.)

So, after I survive tomorrow, I will be heading to New York City to see one of my best friends Blair! (She moved up there several months ago to go back to school for her master's degree in early childhood education. Just saying. She's a cool girl, and I love her, and she'd make a lovely wife for a very lucky man. Sorry, Blair. You know I had to go there.)

I am so excited. What could be better than NYC with not one, but two close friends? Yep. That's right. A fellow Florida girl and best friend, Autumn, is heading up there with me to enjoy four days of NYC fun!

Except, there's one thing...As I just mentioned, I'm a teacher. And Autumn? She works in medical missions and rural health.

We. Are. Poor.

And plane trips for this particular week in and out of NYC are mucho mucho expensive.

So, we decided to drive.

Yep. You read that correctly. We're driving from North Florida to Manhattan (well, technically, Jersey. We have friends we can leave the car with there so we don't have to pay to park in the city.)

Is it possible for two grown, responsible women to drive to NYC? Yes.

Is it a crazy idea, all the same? Maybe.

But it is going to be 18+ hours of pure entertainment, that's for sure (smattered in with some deep, philosophical convos. Autumn and I always end up discussing politics, religion, sociology, history...it's our thing.)

The kicker about this all is, we're not leaving till mid-afternoon Saturday. We have church obligations and gym obligations and work obligations and husband obligations, and, well, we're hoping we can leave before dusk, frankly.

And then we get to drive through the night.

Uh-oh.

Besides a steady supply of coffee from an IV drive (put it right into my veins, I say), we're going to need some serious road trip supplies.

I'm talking sugar and carbs and crazy music and stress balls and well, anything that can stimulate the mind and keep us awake. (Healthy eating is not going to cut it this trip. I'm considering buying jelly beans in bulk just to make it through.)

So, I'm turning to you all. What do you recommend for a nice East Coast road trip? What supplies would you bring? And what would you do to stay awake and fight off the inevitable slumber that will befall us around, say, Virginia? (if we're lucky)

Any helpful tips will be much appreciated. I will make sure to personally document all tips we use, in fact, which means I need to charge my camera battery. (I smell a future blog post; A Road Trip Planned by You, My Dear Blog Friends.)
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Also, if anyone has any NYC recommendations and suggestions, I'd love to hear those too! (So far, we've got a book signing, a used book store, tons of restaurants, yoga, and Central Park happenings on our agenda, but we can definitely squeeze in some more!)

Happy Thursday!