March 15-31, 2025 Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida

Nashville was so amazing!! I wish I knew sooner how awesome that town was cause I would have gone many more times in my life. I had convinced myself that it would just be a bunch of country folk singing country songs but it really was so much more. There’s live music in every bar, and the majority of the live bands are playing songs I know. Songs that get people up and dance to or songs that you can sing along to. Of course it helped that I was there with a bunch of really fun people for a Bachelorette Party. 

While I was at the Bachelorette Party, Greg was out an about in Nashville doing his thing. He went to visit a friend from the ships and went to The Grand Ole Oprey and the Dukes of Hazard museum. 

The girls all left the condo at 8:30 to get to the airport for their flights back home. We all stayed in this beautiful 4 story condo with a rooftop patio. It was amazing. After they left, Greg drove the van over and we did a load of laundry, showered and then hit the road. That day, the temps were in the 30’s so we definitely wanted to head south. We drove a couple of hours to Birmingham, Alabama. The day warmed up.  We passed a couple of Buc-ees too so had some lunch there. The brisket is so good at Buc-ees. We also were passing a casino so stopped in to plunk a few. They gave us each a hundred dollars to play with. I walked out with 20 bucks of their money. We didn’t bet any of our own money. I’d call that a win.

We spent that night at the Bass Pro Shops. 

Next day we headed a little further south towards Montgomery, Alabama and found a great state park called Wind Creek. The campground has over 500 spots. We decided on Spot 72 right across from the lake. Quiet spot. No people and just beautiful views. We hung out a bit by the site, had some lunch and then the shaved ice truck came around. That was a nice treat. After lunch we took a bike ride to explore the rest of the park.

Check out was at 11 and we new we were gonna be heading back into Eastern Time Zone which is an hour ahead so we left at 11 for a short under two hour drive to a State Park in Georgia called Florence Marina State Park. We arrived at 2 o’clock and settled in at Site Number 1. This park was pretty uneventful. Didn’t even seem like a state park. Sites were super close together and not much vegetation plus TONS of kids. Must be Spring break.

Checked out and another two hour drive south. We stopped at a town called Monticello, had some lunch and walked around. They had tons of Antique shops and thrift stores which are a great time killer. We are staying at the Walmart in Perry so didn’t want to get there too early. 

This part of traveling isn’t actually the greatest. It’s pretty much impossible to get a camp site on the weekends and so you need to be in pretty big towns for Walmarts and Cracker Barrel’s and then obviously that takes us away from nature and the things we enjoy but like I’ve said before, “It’s better than working.” We stopped at a hospital parking lot to watch the season finale of Severence (it was awesome,) and then headed to the Walmart. Today we are heading to Howard’s Flea Market in Homossasa to visit our friend Mary from Raquette Lake.

The Flea Market was HUMUNGOUS!! We hung out there till closing at 3 and then headed back to Mary’s place in LeCanto. She has the perfect place for Van Parking. A huge flat yard. She let us wash the van. It really really needed it with all this pollen. The next day she suggested a kayak ride in the Rainbow River so we headed down there for the 12 noon shuttle on a two person sit on top Kayak that we rented from the place. It was beautiful weather and a perfect day for floating the river. We saw lots of wildlife especially giant birds nests with baby birds squeaking and feeding. Some of the trees had over ten birds nests in them. It was really cool.

We spent another night at Mary’s house. We highly recommend her campground spot. I give it 5 stars. I’d give more if I could. 

She doesn’t really own a campgrounds but we pretended she did the entire time we were there.

Our next stop was two days at the Serenova Tract Campground. This is a free campground. You need to register on the website in order to get the combination for the gate lock to get in. 

The next day we headed to the Cyprus Point beach and watched the planes land. 

We headed over for a visit with my cousin Maureen. She made us dinner which was great and then we just hung around and caught up with life. The thing about cousins, especially my cousins is that whenever I see them, it like we have been hanging out every day since I last saw them. It could be years but it seems like yesterday. It seems like yesterday that we were having sleepovers and dressing our Barbie’s with Aunt Sally’s homemade Barbie dresses.

We stayed overnight at Maureen’s house and then headed to Greg’s parents to spend a couple of days before we head out on our cruise to Mexico. we got some laundry done, polished some nails and had a nice dinner at the outback.

Im sending this blog out early because we will both be boarding our free cruise on the 30th so will be without internet for a week. the next blog will be all about the cruise and our drive out to Colorado. Below is our calendar photo for the month of March.