Travel Update 15

After replacing our fuel tank, we left Tom and Joanne's house and headed to Atlanta before flying to the Dominican Republic. We mostly drove directly to Atlanta, but did take a slight detour on the Natchez Trace Parkway and had a day with really bad weather.

In Atlanta, we met up with Andreas's dad, Rüdiger, stepmother, Maggie, and half brother, Karl. We had a ton of fun playing around with Karl but we couldn't keep up with all his energy.

Andreas and Karl

Kathleen with Karl

Rüdiger showed us around town while Maggie was at work and Karl was in daycare. We took a walk along the Roswell boardwalk near the Chattahoochee Nature Center. After that we got a driving tour of quite a few parts of northern Atlanta.

The 14th was Andreas's birthday! We took an afternoon trip to Ponce City Market which had an open food hall with all sorts of options of food. It is connected to the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile multi-use loop, parts of which are still under construction, which encircles all of Atlanta on old railroad lines. 

Model of Ponce City Market

Doggy daycare at Ponce City Market

After a Caribbean dinner at the market, we met up with Kathleen's old classmate Allison and her boyfriend Christian at the Orpheus Brewing tasting room. We enjoyed a variety of their beer and got a surprise trivia night where we placed 2nd.

Trivia team name: #RVLife

On the 15th, we dropped off our kids at a dog sitter that we found through Rover, and got dropped off at the airport for our trip to the Dominican Republic.

Our kids enjoying a full sized apartment

Tornado Warning at Little River Canyon

On January 11th, we woke up to severe weather warnings in Florence, AL. We checked our phones to see when and where the warnings indicated it would be worst. It appeared to be coming west to east, so we decided to head out early and stay ahead of it.

We made it to Huntsville and the wind had seemed to fade significantly. We stopped for brunch at a dog park at the Indian Creek Greenway where Aiden could get energy out as well. Around 11am the wind picked up again, checking our phones we saw that strong winds were now indicated in Huntsville as well, but not much past it.

We continued with our plan to stay ahead of the bad weather. We made it into the mountains in the northeast of Alabama and thought we were safe. We decided to set our goal for Rome, GA, for the night, but no longer felt that we were in a rush.

It wasn't very windy anymore when we reached Fort Payne, AL. Just past the town, we came across Little River Canyon and decided to take the detour to see it. It was our first actual mountains in several months. The river and waterfall were gorgeous. We struck up a conversation with some white water kayakers who were pulling out for the day.

  

 

Leaving the second overlook, it started to rain again, and shortly after started to get windy. As soon as we reached the third overlook, we got a tornado warning on our phone telling us to take cover for the next 30 minutes. At this point, there wasn't much that we could do. We positioned the RV in to overlook parking area towards the center, so that no trees could fall on us and we turned on the radio, listening for weather coverage.

After a bit of heavy winds and rains, the wind started to let up and we decided we would head back to the Fort Payne Walmart and wait out the storm there. At least if something happened to us there we would have people around.

Driving back out of the scenic drive, we came across a downed tree on the road and felt lucky to not have been driving when the warning came to our phones. We were able to clear away just enough of the tree to squeeze by and continued on to Fort Payne.

All in all, we know this could have gone worse and feel lucky we avoided an actual tornado. Below is a map of where tornados actually hit that day. We do think that we did the right thing by trying to staying ahead of the storm front. We knew we were traveling faster than it and not being in a storm at all would have been the best outcome. We did get a bit complacent after reaching the mountains. We probably should have either kept moving or stopped in a population center. 

Image from Wikipedia

Natchez Trace Parkway

At Tom and Joanne's church in Texas, one of the members told us about the Natchez Trace Parkway. He only told us that is was a pretty drive. Since part of it was on our path and we had a bit of extra time, we decided to check it out.

We met up with the Trace in Clinton, MS. We had no idea what to expect so we got on it and drove only a few miles until we saw signs for a visitor center. It happened to be the Clinton visitor center, but it had plenty of information about the Trace. In the visitor center, we met two volunteer who were reading up on the best hikes in North Cascades National Park. They were planning a trip up to the northwest, so we had a fun chat about the PNW. They recommended a restaurant along the Trace which we'll talk about later.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 440-mile commercial free road that stretches from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN. The trail was initially forged by Native Americans and used for centuries before being used by European Americans. In the early 1800s, it was used by traders from Tennessee and Kentucky who would build flat boats to carry their goods down the Mississippi. After trading their wares, they would sell their boats for the value of the lumber and trek back along the trace. Eventually, steamboats made the return trip much easier on boats and the Trace was slowly forgotten until the 1930s when, under FDR, the U.S. government decided to commemorate the history of the trail with construction of the parkway.

There were lots of historical stops all along the trace. The older ones native American villages and burial mounds. We stopped at a few of them along the road and enjoyed reading all of the posted information.

There were also some stops with some more recent history including the old mansion location and family cemetery of the an old politician Cowles Mead. His property was destroyed during the civil war so very little remains.

Further up the Trace, in Tennessee is a monument to Meriweather Lewis. He was traveling up the trace to Washington, DC when he was found dead of a gunshot wound and is believed to have killed himself. We didn't make it that far up the trace but are hoping to loop back around and see this monument.

Along the Trace there is a historic town called French Camp. There are several things to see and do around town designed to show how early Americans lived. However we arrived fairly late and only went to the town cafe, The Council House Cafe. We had been told at the visitor center that it was run by a school for students with disabilities in French Camp. This was half true. It is run by a Christian boarding school in town, but the students were no disabled. Either way, the food was amazing and modestly priced. We had convinced ourselves to go and spend money because we were thinking of it as a charity, but the food was well worth it and we were glad we went.

We spent the night at the only free campsite along the Trace, Jeff Busby Park. For a free campsite it was rather amazing. It was fairly crowded and the spots were not well defined and hard to distinguish in the dark, but we found a place to park. There were nice flush toilets and in the morning we took a nice hike up the hill to a lookout.

Even though the parkway is not a "National Park", we decided that, like Big Cypress, it deserved its own sticker on the side of the RV.

Travel Update 13

After wrapping up in Biscayne and the northern entrance of Everglades, we started on our road towards Austin for Christmas. We drove up the gulf coast of Florida all the way through Alabama, Mississippi and into Louisiana. We mostly had driving days with a few library stops here and there, trying to keep up with blogging.

The most interesting bit of driving was going through the Florida panhandle, especially near Panama City, where Hurricane Andrew made landfall in October 2018 as a category 5 hurricane. It seemed like nothing escaped without some form of damages. Many of the buildings seemed like a complete loss. Still, the city is slowly rebuilding, as construction crews were on many sites, replacing what had once been there.

On a much lighter note, on Thursday, December 12th, shortly after crossing into Alabama, we were looking for a place use the restrooms when we turned the corner to find .. a Buc-ee's. As we haven't driven in Texas yet, we were not prepared for what we saw.

   

All sorts of coffee, but only one type of tea.

Buc-ee's is a Texas based travel stop with Buc-ee's branded everything from travel gifts, to coffee, to "brisket for now and jerky for later", to roasted nuts, to world famous restrooms. We happened to stumble upon their first store outside of Texas.

That night we ended up at a free campsite in Mississippi at which we were able to stretch our legs and have a quieter and darker night than we had at the Walmarts the prior nights.

  

We stayed there for an extra day to recoup from driving, but had to continue on the next day to catch the Oregon men's basketball team beat Michigan in overtime and cash in on a free burger at Red Robin during Kathleen's birthday month.