2 Backpacks, 2 Bikes, a Van and a plan..: On the Road Again

FLORIDA - ALABAMA - MISSISSIPPI - ARKANSAS - TENNESSEE - KENTUCKY - Oh My!!

Well, we've been gone for exactly seven days and I already feel like Tampa is a million miles back and a lifetime ago. Six states in seven days will do that to a person. It feels great to be on the road again - like an old friend - and as interesting, eye-opening, and endlessly amusing as it has ever been. After leaving Tampa as planned on Thursday night after my last day of work, we headed to New Port Richey for the night to get in one last visit with my Mom before we took off into the wild blue yonder (well, the deep south anyway...).

We took Mom out to a fancy dinner at Five Guys Burgers (that's sarcasm, for any of you who don't know me well), then headed to the nearby Big Storm Brewery for a few beers before heading back to her Mom's for the night. Mom & I settled in for one last evening of tea and Scrabble (y
es, we're a couple of Wild and Crazy girls). In the morning we headed out early and arrived around dinner time in Pensacola, Florida for a great couple of days visiting with Andre's sister Joanne and her husband Jim.

Andre and Joanne enjoying a beer at Hopjacks in Pensacola

By 7am on Sunday we were packed up and saying goodbye to Pensacola, heading out on the long drive to Jonesboro, Arkansas that would take us all of the day. Andre was scheduled for three days of work in the Jonesboro schools - his last assignment for the seasonal survey job he's done for the past two winter/spring seasons. It wasn't long before we'd left Florida behind us, for the quiet two lane roads of rural Alabama and Mississippi.

Mike Cooley of the Drive-by-Truckers refers to them as "mean 'ole highways" - and anyone whose been on them knows just what he means. Desolate stretches of nothing, interspersed with the occasional boarded up-town or rusting service station; the kind of small highways that take you from where you don't want to be to where you don't want to go.

At least it felt that way until we hit the flowers. Long lines of yellow, pink and purple wildflowers lining the sides of the road and along the middle divide. They went on for miles in Alabama and continued crossing into southern Mississippi - Spring in full bloom. And an instant reminder of one of the funny aspects of wintering in Florida and heading north in April. It's like traveling backwards through the seasons.

We stopped for lunch in Meridian, Mississippi, the 6th largest city in MS and the birthplace of Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music, as well as Dennis "Oil-Can" Boyd, the baseball player who many of our Red Sox fan friends will remember fondly. We spend a half hour or so walking around the small town - which also boasts Weidmann's Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in the state - then headed back out of town. It turns out we were one day late for the annual Jimmie Rodgers Music Festival, and the town didn't have much else to offer on a quiet Sunday.

We found this sign in a rural store window rather disheartening.
Clearly, some parts of the south still cling to their racist roots.

We arrived in Jonesboro and spent three nights at a very nice Holiday Inn Express. Andre worked for just few hours each day with one longer day and I enjoyed some quiet time alone, catching up on some writing projects, some paperwork, using the nice gym facilities and basically de-compressing from 6 months of working (I know, boo hoo me...).

Jonesboro was a large, fairly sedate, bible-belt town of about 65,000 people and the home of Arkansas State University. We spent the first afternoon driving around looking for the "hot spots", hoping for perhaps a brew pub or even a good beer bar. Two hours in we figured out that Jonesboro was a "dry" town! Needless to say, it was not a very exciting Cinco De Mayo. We did, however, discover a great local park and enjoyed a long hike around a lake that was full of turtles.

A few of Craighead Forest Park's Turtles

A real "family" park...

They had some great "old school" playground equipment.
We hadn't seen one of these in years!

After Jonesboro, we loaded up the van once more and started heading generally North and East, spending one night in Memphis, Tennesee and one night (tonight) in Louisville, Kentucky, after a great visit and tour of the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto, KY. Tomorrow we will head to Pittsburgh to visit with Nick for the weekend. Here are some photos from the last two days in Memphis and Kentucky. Enjoy!