Hello, avid followers! So great to see you here once again. It’s a pretty nice little routine we’ve got going here, don’t you think? This week’s post is coming EARLY (which is unheard of for me, as many of you know) because we have a new town to get to and some super exciting visitors to go meet on this fine Sunday! You’ll hear more about them next week. But for now…

We had one last goal to accomplish in Charleston at the end of Brian’s post. One last tasty, tasty thing. If you recall, we had met a friendly local feller at the Rockabillaque festival whose accent we had a hard time interpreting. He had given us a single recommendation for our time in Charleston, which we promised to honor. We were instructed to take a visit to the one, the only, Martha Lou’s Kitchen.

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This place was described by our companion as (we think) a real, hole-in-the-wall type treasure of South Carolina. If we wanted authentic soul food, this was the place to get it. Martha Lou, he said, was pushing 90 and had been operating this little restaurant for decades. Brian checked what the internet had to say about it and the reviews were very much in the same vein. We loved Martha Lou’s. The namesake herself didn’t appear to be present on the Monday morning of our visit, but two of her daughters, who run the show in her absence, knew what they were doing. Our food came out in a timely fashion and was DELICIOUS. We were checked on a couple of times by both daughters and encouraged to sign their notebook by the cash register before leaving. We flipped through a few pages to find the next free space and saw scrawled messages of adoration from tons of other patrons. If any of you find yourselves in the Charleston area, give Martha Lou’s a visit! You won’t regret it.

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Thoroughly satisfied with our last stop in Charleston, it was back on the road to our next location. On the way we saw a REAL, ALIVE ARMADILLO snuffling in the grass on the side of the road! It had been a goal of mine on the trip to see an armadillo alive, as we’d seen a tragically high number of them belly-up on the freeways between Iowa and Illinois. They’re such a cool little alien freak of an animal, and it’d be heartbreaking to only know of their existence by their squished bodies on the roadside (see also: porcupines 😭) I’m hopeful that we’ll see more in Texas, but for now my heart is buoyed by the single ‘dilla we spotted on the way south to our next classic Southern belle of a city – Savannah, Georgia!

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We had imagined Savannah to be much like Charleston in a lot of ways, limited as our knowledge was of either place before visiting in person. We weren’t entirely wrong, but Savannah seemed a pinch more…plantation-y and frozen in time. Or, should we say, “Antebellum”? Our arrival on Monday was toward the tail end of the day, so we decided to just have a catch-up day – we did some laundry, studied up on some local must-see sights, and rounded out the evening with a visit to Chipotle before calling it a night. At least now we had more of an idea what to do with our next day and a half.

The first item on our agenda the next morning was Planet Fitness for BAGELS! And, of course, a little fitness. We walked into the gym around 8:45, a pretty early start for us, having set an alarm to make sure we’d arrive in time for Bagel Tuesday (the equally beautiful stepsister of Pizza Monday). We sauntered into the gym and peeked into the three large boxes of bagels on the front counter. They had plenty. We needn’t be worried. They even had a half-full box of everything bagels, our favorite! Off we went to burn some calories in preparation of our delicious bagel breakfast. I took a little longer to emerge from the locker room than Brian and when I got out, I saw him sitting waiting for me, without a bagel in his hand. Confused, I raised an eyebrow and made a nom-nom-nom-ing gesture. He shrugged.

WhaaaaAAAAA???!!?

The bagels were gone, he said. Bagel Tuesday ends at 9am, he said. WHAT FOOLS WE WERE for exercising first!! We should’ve grabbed the bagels and ran. We’ll never make THAT mistake again! Luckily, there was a trusty Waffle House just down the street that made us almost forget our bagel-related heartbreak. What happened to the remainder of the bagels, we’ll never know. Hopefully they all got eaten and thoroughly enjoyed as they deserved.

Anyway, back to the important stuff. We continued to the Historic District of Savannah, which was pretty much everything we had wanted it to be. It oozed Southern charm about as much as it oozed Spanish moss. We made our way through Forsyth Park down to Rousakis Riverfront Plaza, taking in all of the sights and sounds along the way. On the Riverfront was a fun little area called the Echo Square. I was lucky enough to have learned about it the night before whilst searching for things to do; we would never have noticed it otherwise. The original Echo Square was paved with a big X so that passersby would recognize this as ~the spot~ for the echo chamber to work. However, the paving had been either pulled up or covered by a blue playground rubber type substance. There was a vague outline on it, but it looked more like an anchor than an X. Still, knowing what we were looking for, we headed into the area inside of a slightly raised circular wall and gave it a try. It worked! Listened to from any other area, the speaker sounded completely normal. But on that one central spot, the speaker could hear their own voice amplified back to them. It sounded just like speaking into a microphone. So cool! We attracted the attention of a couple nearby during our experiment. One woman asked us, point blank, “what are you doing?” She looked very confused by these two weirdos standing in the middle of this circular non-structure, smiling and giggling and talking to themselves in turn. Brian explained and she gave it a try, finding it very fun indeed. She motioned to her companion, who came over to give it a try too. We saw another couple with a small child approaching as we walked away, and looked back a few times to see the woman explaining to them what Brian had explained to her. What a fun little chain reaction.

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We had gone about as far as we could in the Historic District so we doubled back and approached the car again, this time walking down a parallel street about a block over from the one we’d traversed on our way to the riverfront. On this walk we saw lots of cute little bars and cafes, a store full of oddities, and a chocolate shop that appeared to be closed…to the disappointment of me but the relief of my wallet. We headed back into Forsyth park, marveling at all the huge twisted trees draped with that moss that Brian loves so much. As we were looking, we noticed two huge birds in one of the branches. We stopped to watch for a while and discovered that they were freakin’ hawks! Red-shouldered HAWKS! In the middle of the park! We sat on a nearby bench and watched them swooping down from the branches to apparently stomp on the ground, look, stomp, stare….and then swoop up again. We’re still not quite sure what they were up to. If any hawksperts out there know, let us know! As we watched, we saw a few other people on the other side of the park also notice the hawks. One such guy was walking along, minding his own business, when one swooped down out of a tree to pounce on the grass right next to him. He stopped and stared at the bird for several minutes before continuing as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. It was great. Next was a mother pushing a pram with a toddler at her side. The little guy saw and exclaimed and took the woman’s phone to snap some pictures. We watched as they had a seat to watch the hawks for a few moments, too. I mean, who’s going to pass up a free in-person nature documentary?

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Back to the car, we didn’t really have a solid plan of what to do next. We didn’t fancy spending more money on food and drink, as we had plenty of food in the car that just needed to be prepared. Most of what we saw downtown looked like it might cost money. Brian reminded me that we’d wanted to see the new movie Dr Sleep, based on the Stephen King novel of the same title, after being made aware of it by Alison (thanks, Alison!) We had considered doing this last week but, like many things last week, it didn’t end up getting done. This seemed like as good a way to spend the afternoon as any. We both enjoyed the movie but I won’t throw in any spoilers, in case readers want to see it. After that it was off to Starbucks to hang out in a familiar-yet-entirely-new setting. Waking up at 8 made the day SO LONG and we had some late-night appointments to keep.

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The first was a sushi dinner at 9pm. Why so late? My dear nephew Aiden turned 7 (almost a man grown!) and had requested a family sushi dinner…because he’s a classy little dude. Their reservation was at 6 o’clock PST, and we wanted to feel included! We enjoyed our sushi, sent and received cute fammy videos, and cleared out of the restaurant before they closed at 9:30. Our next and last appointment for the evening was the highly anticipated Trivia Night at The Wormhole!

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We’d been looking for a trivia night to quell the withdrawals we’ve experienced all trip long. Not having our brains tested at Bad Beat Brewing‘s weekly trivia has been very tough indeed! Some of you may remember the Friends trivia debacle in Fayetteville, NC… We really didn’t want to go through that again. So we arrived at The Wormhole almost an hour before the posted trivia time and found…

Well, a pretty empty bar. And no noticeable signs about trivia occurring. We sat at the bar and ordered a couple of drinks, then took a little look around. Trivia or no, this place was pretty cool and definitely worth our stopping by. As we made our blacklight-lit way around the dart boards, pinball machines, claw machine, skee ball machine….etc, we saw a chalkboard which told us that trivia sure as heck WOULD be happening! It seemed we were just more eager than the typical Savannah trivia-ees. That gave us time to explore the bar, admire the stage and all the house instruments, watch some fun music videos and settle into the musty, torn-up couchy corner lounge in the back of the bar. A little more time ticked by, another beer was imbibed, and soon enough the population of nerdy, beanied, bespectacled millennials increased notably. Time to put our thinking caps on!

We decided to go with a relatively tame team name (for us) – creepers in the corner. This trivia game was played a little differently than the one we’ve grown used to: there are 5 rounds with 5 questions per round. The questions are worth 100-500 points in each round, increasing by 100 each time. At the end is a “final jeopardy” type question where you risk what you dare on that one last question. Pretty simple. However, the bar also does something called “chilly willy”, in which competitors may run around the bar (inside and outside) in their skivvies, high-fiving all the patrons. This would earn 1000 extra points for guys and 1500 for girls. Any who want to go one step further can stand outside for 1 minute in the freezing cold, still in just undies, which all of them did – for an extra 300 points each. Brian and I decided NOT to join in this merriment, other than receiving our high fives, and sat in the corner grumbling about unfair advantages and whether this was really a true trivia game at all! This was mostly because our main competitor – a team named “why’d you spill your beans, Jacob?” – had TWO members who decided to go all chilly willy, putting them at an unreachable advantage. We’re totally not bitter about it…………… Needless to say, we did not win. HOWEVER the announcer told us all who fared best at the end of each round and we “won” twice and tied once! Let’s not talk about the round where we got 0 points! Or our final score…! It was a good time and we loved the bar. So much, in fact, that we contemplated putting Savannah, GA on our list of potential move-to towns. After a little consideration we figured that most places probably have cute little bars like this tucked away somewhere, and the notion of living in Georgia didn’t really make up for the cuteness of this bar. SO, on we went!

We had been warned by some kind family members of the frigid temperatures making their way toward us overnight. Luckily we awoke NOT frozen to death in the back of Lloyd in a rest area. In fact, we were pretty warm! We were Florida-bound but our first stop was – you guessed it – Waffle House! Much like Starbucks, these tried and true national chains are exactly the same everywhere we go. Reliable, dependable, smother-cover-dice-cap-able. Our end spot for the day was the Apalachicola National Forest, at a predetermined campground, but where we went in between those two places was yet to be decided. A quick look at a map assisted us in making that decision – SOPCHOPPY! Because what a name! We drove along saying Sopchoppy in ridiculous voices and imagining the cute little Big Bend town that awaited us, thinking about maybe even stopping by a restaurant in town to get some grub.

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When we arrived in Sopchoppy, we didn’t even notice. There was almost NOTHING in this town, except a Dollar General and a gas station or two. It’s apparently the Worm Gruntin’ Capital of the World, which is… interesting. There is not a single restaurant. The only food serving establishment is the Sopchoppy Opry (also lots of fun to say) but that only functions when they have concerts. We pulled over, discovered this was the town, and grabbed some DG snacks to keep us going until we reached a fully established town where we could get some real food. If nothing else, it was cool to stop by a tiny SUPER rural place! We wondered how people live in a place like this, big city folk that we are. It was hard to imagine a Saturday night in Sopchoppy. Back to our maps we went to see if there were any food establishments on the route to our campsite. The only one open was the Crooked River Grill.

Upon arrival it became clear that this restaurant may be a little more on the fancy side than we had anticipated. It was located, first of all, inside the St James Bay Golf Club. The other vehicles parked outside the restaurant made our home/car look a little on the scruffy side. I put my reservations aside and we headed in anyway. Thankfully the restaurant boasts many types of seafood fresh from the gulf, all at pretty reasonable prices. We had also happened in on wing night, which offered wings at 50¢ a pop. Brian got some wings and I got fried shrimp. We were both mighty impressed with our food choices – seriously one of the most succulent and fresh-tasting shrimp dishes I’ve ever had. Kudos, Crooked River Grill!

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The drive to our camping spot wasn’t too long but it was mighty dark out there in the wilderness by the time we left the restaurant. Upon arrival we saw another van dwelling in the area, which often gives us a sense of comfort. Safety in numbers, right? It also indicates that this place is commonly camped in and police aren’t likely to come through in the night to kick us out.

A lot of the places we’ve arrived at in the night have all kinds of unexpected quirks to show us in the morning light. The Sand Beach Road recreation area was no different. The van folks departed pretty early in the morning, but not before we got a glimpse of their cute little dogs! Brian stepped in poop somewhere along the way…let’s hope those dogs weren’t responsible. Clean up after your dogs, people! That was our second dog poop-related frustration in as many weeks! But I digress. Brian scraped his shoe and we took a walk down to the water’s edge, discovering a boardwalk out to a dock on the Apalachicola River. There’s a rickety little tower that gives you views for miles around. We sat at the end of the dock watching pelicans diving into the water in search of their breakfast. On the edges of the water were raccoon prints in the sand leading to broken clam shells, like an adorable little wildlife crime scene. On the way back to the car Brian found a big brown feather. We considered taking it with us but instead poked it into Lloyd’s hat, free to fly out as soon as we hit speeds above 20mph.

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Unfortunately the name of this rec area is wildly misleading – there is no sand beach, nor beach of any kind. We were a little disappointed by this and, after making a quick breakfast, headed out in search of a REAL beach. Brian has made it a goal to dip his toes in all the major bodies of water surrounding the US. We’ve checked off the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, now all we need is the Gulf of Mexico! We checked our maps once again and decided randomly on Mexico Beach a little farther West along the coast. To get there, we drove through lots of quaint beach towns like Port St. Joe. We started to get a feel of what to expect in Mexico Beach…OR SO WE THOUGHT!

Unbeknownst to us, Mexico Beach (and much of the Florida panhandle) was absolutely ravaged by Hurricane Michael back in October of 2018. According to that article, approximately half of the buildings in the town were destroyed. We arrived knowing none of this and wondering why Mexico Beach looked less like a cute little seaside destination and more like an active war zone. Nevertheless we took the opportunity to check out the beach, searching for shells as usual. There was a light drizzle rolling in but that didn’t stop us! As soon as we crossed the little wooden walkway from parking lot to sand, we were swarmed by a huge flock of seagulls. We almost ran, we almost ran so far away. Instead we stood our ground and yelled at them that we had NO FOOD! It was futile. We were stalked for the first hundred or so yards of our beachfront stroll. Every now and then we looked back at the decrepit buildings behind us and remembered the town’s devastation. It was eerie and, frankly, pretty depressing that so many people had either just up and left or were stuck living this way 10 months after the hurricane, with no real signs of change coming any time soon. We picked up some shells, inspected them, and flung them away if they weren’t what we wanted. A couple of times we were again swarmed by seagulls who mistook our discarded shells for food. What ninnies. We made it to the mouth of a little river and turned to head back, fingers freezing at this point from the chilly wind (no toe-dipping occurred here either due to the coldness). Brian tried so hard to find a sand dollar, but the best we got were sand quarters and sand half dollars – much less impressive. In total he might have collected about sand-$1.65, all in pieces. WORTHLESS. They were discarded too, and foolish seagulls again tried to eat them. What a strange day at the beach.

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The rest of the evening was spent searching for a new campground, as we’d originally intended to spend 2 nights at Sand Beach but had now travelled much farther west. We stopped at a Starbucks for enough time to grab some happy hour beverages and search freecampsites for a new place to sleep. After that it was on to Subway for a quick bite (it would be later and colder than preferred to cook when we arrived at our campsite). I grumbled and rolled my eyes at the police officers behind us in line who refused to follow the rules of the new Subway Sliders which are very cheap but are also very strict in their construction compared to their regular sandwiches! We overheard “let’s live dangerously tonight” after the employee told him that “I’ll do it but we’re not supposed to”… hmm, seems a little conflicting for a police officer to encourage someone to BREAK THE RULES, no? 🤔 Next time I get pulled over maybe I’ll tell the officer I was just “living dangerously” and see how that works!

Anyway, off to a new forest and a new campsite for the night 😇

This next campsite was…….y’all…..this campsite was ~•º*amazing*º•~. Y’ALL! It was free, huge, had plenty of open sites or secluded sites, running water, flushing toilets, soap in the dispensers, picnic benches and grills… even showers!! With HOT WATER! For FREE!!!! We cannot sing highly enough the praises of the Wilderness Landing campsite in the Blackwater River State Forest of Florida. We drove in late at night and found a little spot tucked into a corner but still close to the central washrooms. In the morning we were able to see just how vast this place was. There were at least 20 other campers in the park at the same time as us but we didn’t interact with any of them because we were all so dang spaced out! We cooked up some soupy potatoey oniony breakfast and headed in for a shower. From my experience, the water was tepid. I speedily scrubbed and dressed, as the morning was chilly already. Brian’s shower experience was vastly more enjoyable than mine. His water was hot enough to generate steam. He also shared the shower with two cute little frogs! How fun is that!? He came out and told me excitedly, taking me into the men’s room to show me the precious amphibian inhabitants. We took a picture and wondered how the heck one of them managed to climb all the way up to the shower head. With that, we said a final thank you to this beautiful land for supporting us for the night and hopped into the car. Like a serendipitous eye-rolling groan-fest of perfection, the radio just happened to play “Sweet Home Alabama” on our drive through to the next state. You’ll never guess where we were headed.

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There are several places in Alabama that have huge histories and cultural significance. We were going to none of those places. Our route and time constraints meant that the only area we’d really be seeing was the gulf coastal nub in the southwest – namely, Mobile and Bayou La Batre. Not much happens in either place, so this seemed like as good a time as any to snag some grocery staples that we’d been missing out on. First stop – Piggly Wiggly! While returning our handful of groceries to the car, we noticed there was a laundromat right next door. How fortuitous! Unfortunately we also saw a guy with a gun on his hip walking into said laundromat with his family… because, y’know, laundromats are very very dangerous places. Welcome to Alabama, folks!

With clean clothes in tow, we headed to yet another Starbucks (I wonder how many hundred Starbuckses we’ve visited at this point) so that I could get a jump start on this blog post! It’s of utmost importance that we’re finished before Sunday morning, you see. I got a good chunk done and then decided to distract myself with online articles and Netflix. We were ushered out at closing time and headed to the State of Alabama Welcome Center to make dinner and sleep.

This rest area was pretty much right on the border of Mississippi, which would be our next stop. However, I had originally had Bayou La Batre on the list of places we wanted to visit for the simple fact that it’s the hometown of Benjamin Beauford Blue, AKA Bubba from Forrest Gump! Bayou La Batre was physically behind us now, but Brian insisted we go the next morning just to say that we went. So, we went. It was very small. There were lots of shrimpin’ boats and not a whole lot else. But hey, at least we went!

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With that checked off the list, it was time to head toward Mississippi again. Our first stop for the day was to be the Gulf Islands National Seashore (GINS). We hadn’t heard of it until the night before at Starbucks and kind of wish we’d heard about it back in Florida. It turns out the Seashore is split between two protected areas – one in Mississippi and one in Florida. The Florida one is significantly larger. The Mississippi one is probably great in the right season, but seeing the real meat of the area requires taking a ferry out to some barrier islands off the mainland coast. The ferry stops running in October. Poop! We still enjoyed our walk around the visitor center and discovered that these islands and the surrounding waters are inhabited by all kinds of critters – alligators, dolphins, jellyfish, and stingrays to name a few. We headed down to a dock and watched the water for a while. There wasn’t much going on, except a little crab munching away on some detritus in the shallows. That was pretty cute at least.

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Our major plan for the day had been GINS, so now we had to figure out a plan B. Biloxi was the next major city on the route so we figured that would do. There was a beach, so maybe it’d be a good place to dip our toes in the Gulf at last! The weather was much more sunny and mild than it had been for our Mexico Beach visit. We stripped off our socks and headed for the shore. At last! Our feet have been moistened by all 3 US-bordering bodies of water! We continued our walk down the beach and started noticing some things floating in the water. Dead jellyfish! Oh no… this place was like a jelly graveyard. We soon started dodging these squishy little sacks and eventually stopped walking in the water altogether. We ducked under the small pier and headed to the other side where the waves of jelly carcasses continued lapping the sand. Nearby were a couple of pipes leading out to the water and Brian decided to go explore them while I retreated from the shoreline and sat on some benches a little ways up the beach. Soon he called out my name and started running in my direction. What the heck? He’d found a hermit crab! Originally thinking it was just a cool shell, he plucked it from the water and saw some little legs receding inside the shell. He showed me and then hurried to put the crab back in the water. After a little more watching he called my name again and motioned for me to come and see. Knowing it was probably something cute, I hurried down the sand to the pipes where he was standing. But I was too late! A smaller hermit crab had approached the big shell to explore and had been frightened away by its sizable inhabitant. This second smaller crab was much less afraid than the big boi, though – the former scuttled along eating bits of stuff on the ground, while the latter stayed curled up in his shell for most of the time we were watching. He started to come out a couple of times but then sucked his legs back in when he noticed those two big looming humans watching him.

But who wouldn’t?

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Other notable sights from this beach included – another flock of seagulls cawing and flapping and fighting over a slice of pizza and a real life SEAGLE! (or, a bald eagle that we happened to see by the sea.) FINALLY!! That was about all the Biloxi beach had in store for us. From there it was off to ANOTHER Starbucks, and from there I’m writing this blog post. Brian helped a fellow patron with some laptop decisions to make after he inquired about mine. I’m now listening to a group of teens doing AWFUL English accents and trying not to visibly cringe. I think I’ll wrap it up here for now, as we’re headed out to the De Soto National Forest after this and will then be rushing off to Louisiana for fun and adventure that you’ll have to wait to read about next week!

As always, much love from the creepers in the corner ❤️