We spent one last day in Florida with Patrick’s family. I enjoy them very much – but there’s a lot of inertia going on with making a plan there. All I’ll say is Joe’s Crab Shack is never going to make my 10 Ten Must-See List in any city. (Partially because you can find them in any city.) But it was fun to talk to all of his family and celebrate his mom’s 80th birthday. Did I note – 80 years old and spent 10+ hours at Disney World?!
Saturday morning we got up very early and poured the kids into the car. We drove *all day*. It turns out that Tennessee and Kentucky are really pretty states. The mountains are beautiful. We stopped in Macon Georgia for lunch. I found someplace on Trip Advisor that was well noted for pizza. It was good – and fun not to go to a burger joint for a change.
Then I decided that we had to have a break of some sort and we stopped in Atlanta. We went to visit the Martin Luther King Jr History Center. It is amazing! I think I mentioned that Lily had been working on a paper on MLK and Malcolm X – so it was timely and we had all been talking about racism and life back in the 1960s. The Center is an emotional and inspiring place. They have a nice timeline of events in MLK’s life, which was helpful in talking to Aine about who MLK was. She knew who he was and knew about his assignation – but not so much about his life.
Also the whole area is peppered with quotes about nonviolence and standing up for what you believe. Obviously good lessons for everyone!
States visited: FL, GA, TN, KT, IN
States visited next day: IN, IL, MN!
We woke up in suburban Savannah. We all went to have breakfast in Savannah – then Grandpa headed back to the hotel while the girls and I scoped out Svannah. We checked out the City Market, where there are touristy shops. The shops were cute, if you’re in shopping. Then we walked along the waterfront. Savannah is a place I’d like to visit again – because even though we probably spent more time checking out the city than we spent anywhere else on the drive down, I feel like I didn’t get to see too much.
I did notice a few things. It’s a very ornate city. There are little urban squares throughout the city. Many had statues or gazebos. The City Market square had a statue of songwriter Johnny Mercer. There were some beautiful flower boxes in the windows – and Lily noticed the fish-head ends to the drain pipes, which were great. Also we saw the FBI, and boats to see dolphins lots of other things to help us recognize that Savannah is worth another visit!
After Savannah, we headed to Jacksonville, Florida.
States visited: GA, FLA
Do you know why Northerners make crazy road trip plans in March? For the weather – so imagine our shock and awe when we woke in Richmond to snow. It was beautiful – especially since we also woke up in a poshy posh resort – but it was still snow. Apparently they had closed the schools in the area. Big travel advisories – although it was really only a couple of sloppy wet inches.
So we kept on trucking!
Onto North Carolina – which is turns out is a very pretty state. We had lunch in Fayetteville at a place called Circa 1800. The food was very good – the ambience a little strange. It was a hair fancier than we needed – although usually we can rise to that kind of occasion. What we didn’t need at lunch was a bar patron who had maybe had a little too much wine. In the end, he cursed the manager as he was escorted out the door. (Cursed as in – a hex on your family, not just the two word curses most of us could come up with.)
Lily is doing research on Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, so it was kind of interesting to put their lives in perspective as we toured various areas. Also she was smart enough to ask Grandpa questions about what he remembered from being a kid and Grandpa talked about his first trips south.
From North Carolina we headed to South Carolina. From South Carolina to Georgia.
We spent the night in Savannah. We ended up taking a wrong turn and drove through a less picturesque part of Savannah. The houses were very small – and I was amazed at how close they were to the street. But eventually we found the hotel – which was a very nice place kinda far out of town. We walked around Savannah a little bit. We saw Paula Deen’s restaurant. Lily was very excited to eat there – until she saw the food. Not a ton to offer a budding vegetarian. But we found out that he brother had a restaurant on Tybee Island. So we ate out there. It was dark so I’m sure we missed the best part of heading out there – the view – but the place was kinda fun.
States visited: VA, NC, SC, GA
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