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

Travel Update 14

This week we spent a lot of time in Louisiana. We started out by driving through Baton Rouge

In Breaux Bridge, we took a swamp tour on recommendation of our friends. We saw a few more alligators, a bunch of turtles and a few more birds similar to the ones in southern Florida.

 

 

 

After our tour, we really wanted to get some good Cajun Food. Kathleen's foodie friend, Julie, highly recommended Crazy 'Bought Crawfish, which was just down the road from our tour. The crawfish themselves were a bit small because they weren't in season, but we still got plenty and they were so good!

 

We spent the next few nights at Rutherford Beach, a popular boon-docking place for RVers and we could see why.

One of the nights there we had a thunderstorm. It's the only time Aiden chooses to come up onto the upper bed of the RV. We calm her down by playing music through our bluetooth speaker.

After a few nights a Rutherford beach, we continued on to Texas. We met up with the same Julie that recommended the crawfish place to us in Houston for our first try at Texan tacos. The tacos were good but for Kathleen, the real joy was catching up with an old friend that she hadn't seen in quite some time.

We spent one more night between Houston and Austin before getting into Buda.

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.