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As we wrap up the finals days in Florida from our 2 week trip we have a very important trip to make to the east coast of Florida. We stopped at a gas station right away and as someone who doesn’t have what I call all these “fancy” gas stations in North Dakota it always blows my mind when I can get a 52oz slushie for under $2(or get one from a gas station at all). It’s probably good we don’t have them here or I would have one every day because slushies are my weakness. So our drive to the east coast of the state was to surprise my grandma! She didn’t know we were there so we drove over to surprise her on our last full day. It was hilarious because she is basically a hermit so we kept knocking on the door and ringing the door bell…

As we were coming up on our final days at the park I wanted to get in as much as I could. We typically only do about a half day in the park and just buy passes for more days because it’s seriously exhausting trying to run around and do all the things. Seriously when we tap out at about 2pm/3pm we already have a good 20,000 steps on our Fitbit each and our feet are killing us! My favorite part each morning when we get there is walking through the empty park. Sure there are people lined up to get in but during this very slow time of the year you kind of feel like you get the park to yourself. Plus it makes for much better photos when there aren’t a ton of people in the way. 🙂 I don’t normally stop for pictures with characters around the…

Back to Universal Studios we went to check out the other side this time! The “Studios” side is just that, more about the studio things and movies but there is a ton of fun to be had at this side as well although I will say Islands of Adventure if my favorite. Shrek 4-D is an awesome ride to check out really close to when you walk in. There was only about a 5 minute wait so we got in right away. However they have soooo much space for lines in there I can honestly say I never want to be in a line that long, it could seriously be a 6+ hour line with how much zig zagging they have going on. Back to the Harry Potter area we went and straight to Gringotts. The dragon on top the bank does breath fire about every 15 minutes so be…

Finally it was time to hit up Universal Studios and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter aka my home. The whole reason we planned the trip for January is because after checking out some tourism sites they predicted this time to be the LEAST busy time of the entire year and holy crap it was so quiet and for someone who doesn’t love to be around people it was really freakin nice. We got there and Volcano Bay was closed(not that we planned to go) due to “weather”. I use that term loosely because I’ve really never laughed so hard in my entire life. People looked at us just bewildered that we were in shorts and it was 35 degrees out(just for an hour or so and then it was in the 60s/70s). We had literally just come from -70 degree weather in North Dakota, yes you read that right…

The first few full days in Florida we caught up on some sleep from the drive, did some shopping, and some exploring before we started our days at Universal Studios. I always like to find a local donut place to check out because we have NO donut shops where I live. We have grocery stores that make fresh donuts but it just doesn’t give me the same vibe as a place that specializes in donuts and has the ability to get more creative with them. I found Valkyrie Donuts online and they looked amazing. Their square donuts are the size of 2-3 regular donuts so they are HUGE and absolutely phenomenal. They had that perfect mix of density while still being a fluffy donut so it was amazing. I had to go with the cookies and cream one to keep it simple for now, too much stuff on it and…

Seriously I couldn’t wait to get on the road for Florida. We had done this drive just two years earlier in 2016 so we semi knew what to expect except this time it was January instead of March. The initial goal was to get as far south as possible as fast as we could as there was a blizzard in the forecast so we were basically racing it. It was of course still freezing most of the time but once we got out of North Dakota it was nice to be above -30 degrees(yes, -30 degrees fahrenheit). We always make lots of stops so Elsa doesn’t have any accidents in the car and she sometimes likes to be dramatic and make her peoples carry her all the time especially when it is even slightly cold out. Really she was born to live somewhere warmer I think. We did great racing…