I drove the family from the Buffalo area to south Florida a little over a week ago. We shared a super nice, big rental home with other family members. I knew the travel and congestion would be painful this time of year, but it was way worse than I had expected.

Apparently with the early Easter this year and the way schools across the country all lined up in terms of time off, WOW were the crowds bad!

Actual wheel time south was ~26hrs and back home was closer to ~29hrs!! Traffic jamb after jamb through Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Things didn't loosen up until about West Virginia.

Just curious to see what other's experiences were.

I live 2 miles off I-75 at the Florida/Georgia border. It's pretty much always busy on the interstate, year round but we tend to see more going north on Sunday and more south on Monday. Add in those who come to town for Friday and Saturday evening excursions from the smaller areas and it makes traffic a nightmare.

We started our trek south on a Thursday afternoon and back north on a Saturday afternoon. Stopping anywhere for gas or a pit stop was a nightmare. Every place was jammed beyond what they could easily handle.

My sister and her husband in SF didn't even get a day off? And they have pretty good jobs. We got the friday and monday off but didn't go to far from home although we should've went skiing one last time.

When we drive between NC and central Florida two to four times a year, we always avoid the weekends. Even so, traffic can still be a PITA.

On a positive note, our 2016 Nissan Quest averaged just over 23mpg per the dash computer for the bulk of the trip. This was with 6 passengers and a week's worth of luggage. Speeds of 80mph for stretches too.

Not bad
I wonder what the calculated mileage would've been.
We did pretty much the same trip last year, but from Toronto and my calculated mileage ended up around 22.5 mpg while the computer was reporting over 23mpg on our GC.

We flew CVG-TPA then rented a brand new Cadillac XTS and drove down to Siesta Key. In order to avoid the Saturday afternoon crowds at Publix, we signed up for instacart...in FL they can even deliver hard liquor, so we got our groceries and drinks delivered within an hour of arrival. The delivery people even brought the items up the elevator in the condo, and placed them on the kitchen counter. Saved a TON of aggravation at the super market.

Direct flights on Delta were quick and painless, just under 2 hours in the air. Burned up some SkyMiles and some cash to get 5 of us down and back.

SK traffic is always terrible, but it was even worse this year because of Spring Breakers. Restaurants were packed, it was kind of a drag.

You picked a bad time to travel. I flew to south florida last week, the ticket prices were insane because everyone and their sister wanted to go there last week. The airlines charged accordingly.

We were down in Cape Coral. The inlaws flew into Tampa and grabbed a rental car. The flights cost them a bundle this time of year (southwest). Between hotel rooms, fuel and food it cost me about $700-800 to drive. Direct flights for the 6 of us and a rental car would have been 4x that. We would have had more days on vacation though! Inlaws had a BMW X3 rental that I thought was pretty neat. They got a real deal on that for something crazy like $19/day per the FIL.

My DL flights were about $975 for the 5 of us, once I burned up some SkyMiles. The XTS was $900 for Saturday to Saturday and we know the folks who own the condo, so that was $1050 for the week. Aside from spending $500 at Publix, and another $500 for alcohol for the 5 of us (3 college age kids) and $150-350 a night for dinner, it could have been worse.

I almost think an all-inclusive in the Caribbean might have cost less, given all the booze we drank, and the dinners out.