50 State Journey- Southeast Road Trip
- Tracy
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 22
Our family is attempting to travel to all 50 states through creative road trips. We prefer to choose a route which may have several destination stops throughout the trip. This often results in spending a short amount of time in one city. We love to get the flavor of the place that we are visiting by experiencing dining experiences, seeing a well-known icon from that area or simply experiencing the understated charm of that particular area.
For our Spring Break 2024, we visited five new states. There is a lot of dispute over what constitutes crossing off a state. Our family decided that we would count a state if we completed an activity or had a meal in that state. I should note that my husband and I have visited some of the states prior, but we are trying to achieve all 50 states as a family.
Indiana is our home base and we were traveling to the following new states : North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and West Virginia.
Here is how we did it!
Day 1: We started out by making the 7.5 hour drive to Asheville, North Carolina. We arrived in the evening, grabbed dinner at Asheville Brewing Company and stayed at the Hampton Inn Asheville.
Day 2: The next day was Easter and we spent a lovely spring day at the Biltmore.
You can find my full blogpost about Asheville here.
That evening we drove on to Charleston, South Carolina. It was a four hour drive and we arrived in time for dinner with a friend.
We grabbed dinner and spent the evening at Embassy Suites Mount Pleasant. Highly recommend!
Day 3: We spent our day in Charleston by taking in history through a walking tour with Bulldog Tours, visiting Charleston City Market and exploring the beautiful city.
You can find my full blogpost about Charleston here.
We left late that afternoon and traveled on to Tybee Island, Georgia for some beach time!
We stayed at the Beachside Colony Resort.
Days 4-6 We spent time enjoying Tybee Island. Highlights of our time there included an ecology tour, a sunset dolphin tour with Captain Derek's Dolphin Adventure Tours and beach time!
You can find my full blogpost about Tybee Island here.
Our time at Tybee also included a day trip to Savannah, Georgia. Read about our time in Savannah here.
Day 7: That morning we checked out of Tybee and headed for home. However, we had a few more stops in mind. Since we were headed home through South Carolina, we detoured to take in Congaree National Park. This was a bit out of our way, but worth it to see another national park and stamp the girls' National Park Passports. Be aware that this park is very wet as it has a wetland ecology system. It is often subject to flooding. We were able to do the boardwalk trail, but some other trails were covered in water. This was about a three hour drive from Tybee.
From there, we continued our drive. We knew that we wanted to do a stop in Virginia. We chose to have dinner in Wytheville, Virginia.
We chose to have dinner Log House 1776 Restaurant. This was such a fun stop. The staff is so sweet and the log house is quaint with so much history. The staff encouraged us to look around and explore all the nooks and crannies. There is a garden area which even has bunnies to visit. This was an unexpected favorite!
We continued on after dinner to Beckley, West Virginia which is about 20 minutes away from New River Gorge National Park. We stayed at the Tru by Hilton in Beckley.
Day 8: We did some exploring at New River Gorge National Park. Our visit was brief, but we took in the views and visited the welcome center. My girls were excited to get another stamp.
We had about a 6 hour drive left to return home by evening.
We felt like this was a well-paced trip that allowed us to see many sights over our Spring Break.
Find more multi-destination road trips on our 50 state journey at the Middle of the Road Mindset.
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