Missouri to Tennessee

Whew! What a day and what a drive.

Up early for breakfast at the hotel and a walk through old town in St. Charles. My hotel was only a block away from here, so it was an easy walk. You could see the clouds gathering and the tornado warning was due to hit around 5 pm that night in Memphis. But St. Charles was so beautiful, I had to take some time.

Surprise One – B Bathhouse. This was my splurge for St. Charles, their products smell just wonderful! And, as it turned out, the room spray ended up being a life saver at the cabin.

So St. Charles to Bells, Tennessee. A white-knuckle and long drive. Pouring down rain with occasional short breaks in intensity. I just hung on and drove, although there were times when I wondered if I should have booked another night in St. Charles and eaten one night’s stay at the Green Frog Cabins. But too late! I was really sad as I had to skip by St. Louis entirely and just drive, a long 7 hours of driving in the rain and finally in the encroaching dark. I made it, I found my cabin, and all turned out well.

I walked into the my cabin, the Moonshine Cabin, and the problem, musty! You could tell it wasn’t frequently used lately. My sinuses immediately responded, and not favorably. Plus I went from the frozen north to really green and blooming! This is where the room spritz helped, I sprayed it all over and it helped add a much better smell. The porch awnings were deep so I opened the doors and let the wind blow through the cabin. Unfortunately, only one window wasn’t painted shut so the fresh air only helped in the living room area (I later figured out that I needed to switch between heat and a/c to clean out the mustiness). But the place was so charming and the bed was very comfortable. I was also the only one at the cabins this week. The only person I saw was the handyman who came by the next day to clean up after the storm! Never met anyone else, at all.

Surprise Two – the grounds for Green Frog were filled with historic structures and they leave you a set of keys to all of them so you can take a tour through the grounds. Due to my allergy attack, I skipped going to Paducah and the Lakes between the States region and just stayed at the cabin. This was a nice way to get outside and take a short walk.

It also appeared that the owner was converting additional structures into cabins for stays. They have a very nice event center there that you can rent out for groups, I could definitely see that the ability to rent out more cabins would be nice. If the cabin wasn’t so musty, it would have been perfect. Except no television, no radio and no internet. Thankfully I had one bar on my phone so I could keep an eye out on the weather. Arriving during a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning was a little nerve-wracking! A weather radio would have been a nice addition. http://www.greenfrogfarm.org

Driving Through MIssouri

Question, what day is it? It is only Tuesday and I am having a hard time keeping it all straight already! Of course, that leads to, where am I? 🙂

Today I drove from Muscatine, Iowa to St. Charles, Missouri. I took the scenic route along the Mississippi River, down Highway 61, for the most part. I ignored my Apple wayfinding for the most part as it wanted me to take a different route than where I wanted to go. The hardest part, I was supposed to check into our HOA meeting at 6:30 pm. However, I was in Louisiana, Missouri at this time, where I thought I could check in, and absolutely nothing was open. So many businesses are closed on Monday and Tuesday down here at this time of year, and are rarely open past 4 or 5 pm. It really caught me off guard, although I suppose it shouldn’t have. So, meeting missed unfortunately.

Surprise 1 – You don’t see much of the river on the Scenic River Road. It was fun to zip up and down hills in the middle of nowhere though. At least I met this nice gentleman looking for a ride to Louisiana, MO and so at least I had some company for a stretch. Very chatty, name of Jason, and I was glad of the company.

Surprise 2 – I really enjoyed touring the Mark Twain Cave. The tour guide was very fun and had a lot of cute information on Mark Twain and the history of the cave and cave formations. I do love a cave tour! Hannibal, MO was a fun town to visit and they had a fantastic pottery shop I stopped at.

going south

Tennessee to Mississippi

I am continuing to plan a trip south to Florida. Not sure when I will leave but I have a wedding to go to! Here is one of my pages from my planner. I plan to stop in Memphis and in Natchez before heading east. I am working on drawing in state flowers for this part of journey. Any thoughts on the journey and where to stop? One suggestion I have received is the World War II museum in New Orleans (I am assuming I will swing east through here). I have some ideas for food, always have to plan out your food! My handwriting got a little messy on these pages, not sure what is going on with that! Need to refresh my penmanship I guess.

Travel Dreams Part 2

I have been continuing my bucket list in my new travel journal. Right now I am starting with a western driving tour over the course of about 3 months, maybe in 2023. Yes, I am planning for what seems like a long way in the future! Over the weekend I sat down with my oldest nephew to go over what I am thinking. He has done some rafting trips and such out west so he has more experience out there than I do! For example, I had no idea there was so much to see and do in Utah. I am very excited to get out there and do some hiking and exploring. I will have to work on my knees so I can do some horseback riding too, I hope.

A page from my Travel Dreams Journal

My next state to take a closer look at is Arizona. I have spent quite a bit of time around Phoenix as my grandparents used to live in Sun City and I had a very close friend (Scott and his partner Angel) who lived in Phoenix. I would typically fly down once or twice a year to visit and once in a while Grandpa would even let me borrow his car (I was in college at the time, so I was broke all the time). The furthest north I went though is Prescott, never made it to Sedona. So my plan is to go down into northern Arizona and visiting Lake Powell, Sedona, Tuba City and Jerome.

After that I will start looking at New Mexico and Oklahoma! At the very least, this has given me something to dream about and draw about and think about. What will I do after we come out of Covid-19? After retirement? All such good questions.

If you have any thoughts on what I should absolutely NOT miss in eastern Wyoming, Utah, Arizona or Oklahoma please let me know! If you are wondering about what the left side is mentioning, it is Longmire Days! I am a huge fan of the Longmire tv series and have read some of his books too. I highly recommend them!

I saw this template on Pinterest and fell in love with it. Each location will have a “card” where I draw in a feature of where I want to go. Sometimes a location, sometimes a feeling. Then you separate the pages into different boxes to write down ideas or thoughts. I am so sorry that I didn’t write down who had the original idea.

Thank you for reading this!

Planning Part 1 – Where to first?

I have been seeing a therapist during our lockdown. Being home alone for days, weeks and months at a time is really wearing on me, why I decided to reactivate my blog. She reminded me that retirement is actually going to come some day, in the not too terribly far off future. It has been brewing around in my head and to be honest the idea scares me. Both for what I want to do and how it will all work out without a paycheck. I want to travel and explore the world. One plan is to take my daughter on a river cruise after I retire. But I am thinking I really want to settle in somewhere for a couple months and explore, get to know the place and not just skim. Visit my roots and discover more about my heritage in Denmark, Norway and Bohemia. Or do I volunteer somewhere for a while? Maybe start housesitting? At her suggestion I have now started a Travel Planning Journal with places I want to visit. My first idea was Caye Caulker in Belize to decompress for a couple weeks. But where next is brewing around in my head and I don’t know where to start. Any good resources, ideas or suggestions out there?

My journal from Archer & Olive. It has great paper, lays flat, dot pattern, nice and white. Highly recommend.
My set up page, setting up my dreams for future travel.

My first step? Take a WordPress class to learn more about how to work this site! I signed up, just haven’t started yet so I am feeling around a bit blindly. 🙂

Charleston 2014

I had 2 goals when I left for Charleston. One was to find the small alleyways mentioned by Laura Childs in her books and I found them! My favorite was the Philadelphia Alley between Church and State Streets. I also found Unity, Lodge and Longitude. My second was to try Poogan’s Porch, which is supposed to be haunted. This place was awesome! But I didn’t see any ghosts.

So what else happened during my week in Charleston? I had biscuits at least once a day (yum) and ate a lot of really good food. My favorites were Gaubert & Michet Cafe, Social (pizza), Minero’s (chicken taco), Toast (scrambled eggs, cheese and bacon on a biscuit), Queology (pulled chicken sandwich), Blossom (crab cake with asparagus and shrimp coolie) and of course Poogan’s Porch (shrimp pasta with a biscuit). Good thing I didn’t rent a car and walked a lot!

I also did a harbor boat tour, a carriage ride (with Lindsey, the guide and Miley, the horse), three church tours (2nd Presbyterian, First Scots Presbyterian and Unitarian), a historic walking tour (Beth the guide), and 2 house tours (Nathaniel Russel (Ken Brody the guide) and Edmonston-Alston). I also went to the Unitarian church service on Sunday morning and had a wonderful breakfast (they really put on a spread there after the service).

All in all it was a whirlwind week and I had a great time. BUT no plantation tours and I also wasn’t able to get up and visit my niece in Myrtle Beach. I do plan on coming back in a couple of years just to visit Myrtle Beach though, I hope. 🙂