From Sunrise to Sunset

And finally, after hours of combing through hundreds of photos, editing photos, and editing cute little TikTok videos, I’ve made it to the final day, final post, of our Daytona Beach vacay. Check out the prior days here: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And here’s…

FRIDAY

I specifically woke up early on our last morning so I could watch the sunset. I opened the balcony door, rolled the computer chair right up to the door, and wrapped the giant curtain around me to keep the rest of the room dark. Then I sat there cozied up in a blanket, just enjoying the perfect temperature and the beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic ocean!

I woke everyone else up right as the sun was fully up, and we quickly got dressed, packed the last of our things, and then we loaded up the bell-hop cart thing to head downstairs. We got the van packed up again, and then headed to one more local coffee shop for my morning iced latte. This place was super vibey and beautiful, and the honey bear latte was delicious.

 

 

And then one more stop at one more local spot, the Java Junction, for morning donuts and bagels. And completely unplanned, it was actually national donut day, so that worked out perfectly!

We made a short little drive up to Jacksonville, to hit up the IKEA.

We spent a couple of hours browsing through the display areas, and got to the cafeteria just in time for lunch, which is one of our favorite things.

We honestly stayed at IKEA for way too long, but then after that we also spent way too long hunting Little Free Library’s all over the east side of Jacksonville.

Around 4pm, Addie finally realized, about 2.5 hours after leaving, that she had put down her new meerkat on the bench at the IKEA exit, and forgot it there. Jeff just very calmly added IKEA back to the van gps and we turned back around to go get it. (We had gotten one for each girl, so there was just no way we could deny the baby sister her meerkat, since her sister had one!) And so by that point, we decided to grab burgers for an early dinner in Jax around 5pm, before finally hitting the road home.

Obviously we had to stop through at the Busy Bee on our way home for a potty break and to stretch our legs a bit, before getting back on the road again.

And since we were on the road so late, we actually saw the sunset on the drive home! So I book-ended my day with sunrise in Daytona Beach and sunset somewhere on I-10 heading home.

And that was our trip! So glad we were able to tag along on Jeff’s work trip, and very thankful most of the expenses were covered for us 🙂 We had a great time, and loved starting our summer off with a make-shift vacay at the beach!