Hello there!
Since I last posted I have 1-written my exams and finished first year uni, 2-moved out of my apartment, 3-got a summer job and 4-spent a week road tripping from Florida to Ontario.
It’s been a wild couple of weeks. While I don’t think anyone will be all too interested in the first three points on that list, I figured someone somewhere might want to see how the road trip went, the route we took, and the things we did.
It was a pretty amazing trip, needless to say.
The backstory to the trip: My friend was riding the show circuit in Florida all winter, and was planning to do the drive back. However, that is a very long drive. In the hopes of making the trip a little more fun, and seeing more the US before she leaves, we turned it into a road trip. Our general route, we knew, had to begin in West Palm and end in Port Hope, but besides that there really wasn’t much that we HAD to do. Given that we knew we had a few places we wanted to see, we drew up a basic itinerary and map of our trip.
Begin in West Palm, and spend the day there. The next morning, drive to Atlanta through Ocala, and spend two nights there. Then, Lynchville for an afternoon and into Nashville for the evening and the next full day. After that Louisville for two days, and finally Elkton for two days before driving allllll the way back to Port Hope. Needless to say, we were fitting a lot into the week.
I flew into West Palm from rainy, cold, miserable Ontario. The warm weather and sun was such a nice break-but reminded me how desperately I needed sunscreen.
Carrie and I spent the afternoon walking around and enjoying Palm Beach.
The flowers were absolutely stunning, needless to say.
The way it’s all set up leads you down little paths to fountains and new shops. It was a wonderful place to just walk, catch up with each other, and appreciate the space.
As you can likely tell from the background, there was a storm brewing on the horizon, so we finished up our sightseeing and headed back to the farm where Carrie Had been living. As much as we didn’t want to leave, Carrie had some goodbyes to say and we were planning a VERY early start the next morning.
The BEST part of the farm was not the fancy barn or beautiful horses, the stunning architecture or picturesque views.
It was the dogs. There were so many dogs. I was in heaven. Pictured above is a corgi aptly named Fluffy, one of the 6(?) dogs I got to meet.
A dream come true, I tell you.
The next morning, we were up and in the car as the sun began to come over the horizon. Honestly, I don’t want to look at my bank account and see how much we spent on coffee this trip-It was definitely more than we spent on accommodation and attraction entrances. Perhaps combined.
About 20 minutes into our drive, Carrie pointed out the billboards to me. There’s nothing like a slightly threatening Jesus billboard to entertain you on a long drive. I began a project of photographing the billboards that amused me- sometimes it was odd punctuation, advertisments for everything from gator jerky to strippers, or, in several occasions, ominous warnings of the saviour’s second coming.
I’m not sure I want the answer to that one…..
Still not sure what “Free Samples” means…..
not sure whether this is referring to the second coming of Jesus or whether Jesus is exasperated and using his own name in vain. Either way, it’s slightly ominous and threatening.
Just to clarify, I don’t mean any disrespect. I was just a little bit shocked and entertained by these and wanted to share them with you.
On the road, we stopped in Ocala. Ocala is a stunning farm country that was about half way between West Palm and Atlanta, and the Horse Carrie rode for the year was living at one of the farms there, so we stopped as a final goodbye.
Back on the road, we pulled into Atlanta just as it was becoming evening, and stayed with some family friends of Carrie’s. After a wonderful dinner and a good night’s sleep, we were ready to tackle Atlanta. We started off our trip going to Coca-Cola world.
With exhibits on branding, the origin story of the company, and the viewing of the vault that contained the recipe, this was a really fun stop. The wildest part, however, was likely the tasting room. A futuristic-looking room filled with every flavour of coke you could imagine, most of which weren’t available in North America.
For some strange reason, I felt a bit hyper after that………
That day it was absolutely pouring outside, so we did the run through the park to the CNN building, attending a tour whilst looking like wet rats.
Both of these stops I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Atlanta. Highly unique, interactive, and fascinating, they were both stops that required significant time and I’m glad we focused on them instead of trying to hit every landmark in the city.
Thant night, we had another amazing dinner with the family we stayed with and watched the football draft picks while the sons(tried) to explain the process to Carrie and me. They honestly deserve a medal for their patience during that process.
And that was the end of the first stretch! If you enjoyed this, I’ll be posting our second stretch(Lynchburg and Nashville) as well as the third(Louisville and Elkton) in the future!
Thank you, and let me know if you’ve done anything like this, different places you visited, or what your dream road trip would be in the comments!
Hilarious