Ugh, I'm looking at weather forecasts for next weekend (which I know can be largely unreliable this far out), and I am not liking what I am seeing for our drive down.
Our plan was to leave Wisconsin on Saturday morning around 4:00 am, and stop for the night ~10 hours away in Manchester, TN. (Then on to Valdosta, GA on Sunday and on to Orlando on Monday.) We have two ways we can get there -- through Indiana and Kentucky, or through Illinois. I picked the major cities I'd be passing through on both routes, and Saturday morning/afternoon shows rain/snow/wintry mix in Indianapolis, Louisville, and Campaign, IL. Not ideal. Same for Sunday, which was our Plan B departure day (stopping in Morrow, GA on Sunday and Orlando on Monday). So now we're looking at the possibility of leaving Friday late morning/early afternoon. (I'm very fortunate to have a great boss who'll let me take an extra day at the last minute on top of the two weeks I'm already taking off.) We'd probably stop around Mt Vernon, IL Friday night, where we should be past all of the garbage weather when we leave on Saturday. Then the dilemma is, do we drive just four hours to Manchester on Saturday, putting us back on our planned timeline? Do we drive the extra six hours to Valdosta? And if we do that, do we spend an extra day there? Or drive to Orlando on Sunday, and spend and extra day there?
Of course, the weather forecast could change completely in the next 7 days, and all of this could be moot. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all of the bad weather is taken out of the forecast by then.)