Summer Coaster Tour - Day 05 - Driving all day to Philadelphia - 2026/05/25

On this big roller coaster trip we are definitely covering a few miles in the Prius. Today is going to be a full day of driving to get to our next location. Jacob will be staying in North Carolina to visit family, so it's just the Flowers family for these next few days. Don't worry though, we'll meet back up before this trip is over. Downstairs in the lobby Jacob met us as we packed up the car to go. 

565 miles. Over 8:30 hours and that's assuming zero stops. It's going to be a long long drive today. We'll be making a few stops along the way to break things up though, so it won't be a slog. And we'll be crossing 4 different state boarders today! 

Since we opted to skip the hotel breakfast, how about we stop into another LIDL grocery store before we get too far into our trip. 

Getting here early in the morning we had our pick from lots of fresh pastries. Theresa said we'd be in trouble if there was a LIDL near us back home. 

Tasty treats for everyone! 

Oh North Carolina, you're a little crazy. Going 70+ mph down the freeway and passing people. 

And I guess you've got to take your toys with you when you've got an RV. 

We drove into Virginia but didn't happened to get a photo of the State line. 

Lunchtime means a stop at Chick-fil-A. It's Memorial Day and I love that Chick-fil-A takes a moment to remember. This table is set for the Missing Man. Those who fought for the United States but didn't come home. Nice. 

Back in the car and driving 3 more hours north, it's time to stretch our legs again. Chuck E Cheese is here for us with more arcade games to play and tickets to win! 

Alli putting up some high scores on basketball, but there's no big ticket bonuses here. 

Theresa was excited to see Milk Jug toss. She's getting pretty good at it, but the lip of this milk jug was titled a bit to the side, which made it quite a bit more difficult. Not an amazing bonus for getting 4 jugs (50 tickets) or 5 jugs (100 tickets), but enough to make it fun. 

But it was difficult. I managed 4 jugs. 

Over at Ring Toss, you don't get too many tickets for getting normal points, just 1 ticket per 50 points, but if you get over 450 points you'll win the bonus! Normally the score you have to beat is 850 points! 

850 points is really hard. Usually there's not enough rings to get those kinds of scores. 

But boom, there's 450 points and an 80 ticket bonus! Yeah! 

There weren't a lot of great games here for earning tickets, but there's games we like to play. 

This is a new game to us but boy does it eat credits. 

Alli you made it to the bonus stage and got... 20 tickets! Woo! 

Ian, you won the bonus! 100 tickets! 

Hi Chuck! 

In the end, for our 250 credits, we earned a total of 1005 tickets, giving us an average ticket per credit ratio of 4.02. Pretty low, but it was good to get out and take a break. 

Pushing the miles. Welcome to West Virginia. Wild and Wonderful. 

Maryland Welcomes You. Leave No One Behind. 

Welcome to Pennsylvania. Let Freedom Ring. 

Oh man, as soon as we transitioned from Maryland freeways to Pennsylvania freeways the roads got really rough! It reminded me of Colorado when we're driving from Kansas! 

Luckily it wasn't as long lasting as Colorado, becoming less rough after less than a mile. 

9:20pm and we've made it to the hotel. It was a long day. We started around 9:30am, so it's been about 12 hours of moving to get up here. 

And here's our fun little map that shows the places we've stopped so far on the trip. Tomorrow we'll be at a new theme park!