Sharing Life’s Lessons
On the road again. A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. There’s no place like home. These are phrases we’ve all heard. They came to my mind over the past month. If you happen to be friends with Kenny or me on Facebook, you know we’ve been traveling if you’ve seen our pictures.
“On the road again…” by Willie Nelson. (Sorry if you have that tune stuck in your head now!) It was our family theme song several summers when the kids were young. Kenny worked for a company that sent him out of town occasionally so in the summer the kids and I would join him on the road.
It seems like someone is always asking us where we’re going next. We don’t want to let anyone down, so we decided in February that we should plan a trip. Where do Indiana people go in February? South! We’ve always said we don’t need to buy a place in Florida because we know so many people there, we could stay all winter by just spending a few days at each place.
“It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”. Living or wintering in Florida has never appealed to me. I enjoy visiting my brother and his family who have lived near Orlando for over 30 years. For the past three years we have also enjoyed a visit with Kenny’s brother and sister-in-law in Naples. Stopping to see Aunt Darlene in Sarasota is always a treat.
A couple weeks is all I need. Usually we fly, but this year we decided to drive with no set schedule. When Kenny said we might be gone 3 or 4 weeks I thought he was kidding, but we were gone 3 ½ weeks! My sister-in-law did look a bit startled when she saw our luggage. I reminded her that we had to pack for the 1-degree temperature when we left Indiana, to the 90°s expected in Florida and everything in between.
We spent the first night in Sevierville, TN with friends. They were excited to show us their new adventure which is building Tree House vacation homes right next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you’re looking for a unique get-away check out www.mytreehouseescape.com. When we left their home, we took a winding mountain road through Cade’s Cove then headed to Senoia, GA.
Senoia is a small town with the claim to fame of being the place where many movies were filmed. Fried Green Tomatoes, Driving Miss Daisy, and more. In Fried Green Tomatoes the main character became a Mary Kay Consultant (not the main plot but interesting to me). I hadn’t seen the movie since 1991 so we watched it on my phone from our room in the Veranda Bed & Breakfast that night. The Veranda is a lovely place built as a hotel in 1906. It had a working fireplace in our room. Thankfully it had been updated with a private bath also!
Next we were on to Warm Springs, GA where we toured Franklin Roosevelt’s Little White House, his vacation home and the place he died. From there we traveled on to Florida where we received a warm welcome from my brother and his wife. They didn’t even question the number of suitcases we brought in.
Skip ahead 22 days and we were back in Indiana. I enjoy snow but I am happy that we went from 9 inches when we left to bare ground when we returned. I’ve never liked the dirty slushy melting mess in between. I’ll share more of our adventures next week, but there really is no place like home…wherever you live.