The day after I took Jeremy to the airport, I went to Jean Lafitte in the bayou of Louisiana. There, I took another airboat ride through the western bayou. The difference between a bayou and a swamp is that a swamp is usually stagnant water, while a bayou is a very slow moving (almost stagnant) […]
I have been to New Orleans (or N’awlins) twice, once in 1969 coming home from a baton competition in Houston, Texas and the second one in the mid 80s when I went with Myles to set up the opening of the World’s Fair in New Orleans. The first time, I was too young to explore
The first time I saw the ocean was in Long Island Mississippi. The next time was a couple days later when we spent 5 days in a small motor lodge on Pensacola Beach. The carefree vacation was the first ever taken. In the 55 plus years since I first was on the Emerald Coast, (It used
From 1967 to 1969, there was a show on evening television called “Gentle Ben” about a little boy, his pet bear (named Ben), and his father, the park ranger. The story took place in the Florida Everglades and the father routinely drove an airboat for work. Since that time, I had wanted to see the
After I completed visiting all 50 states, I set my sights on seeing all of the 63 National Parks and as many of the 428 National Park Service sites (Monuments, Seashores, Historic Sites, etc) as possible. When I set my sights on visiting all of the National Parks, there were only 58. A few of
I have been a Jimmy Buffett fan since college. His song, “Changes in Latitude, Change in Attitudes” resonated with me. Growing up in Ohio but always feeling like I was from Tennessee, I didn’t have to go all the way to the Florida Keys to feel the difference. That said, I have never been to
It was February of 1962. This giant console black and white tv set that was as much furniture as entertainment occupied the corner of our living room. I was not quite four years old and I had been playing in my room. My mother yelled to me to come watch television. I remember being frustrated
A1A is a grand scenic drive that goes from the Northern Atlantic coast of Florida all the way to Key West, Fl. It has been declared by many of the pundits as one of best drives in the United States. When I was a child, we commonly visited my aunt, uncle and cousins in the
Originally, I had planned to start my journey by stopping at my twins’ house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and then work my way down the coast. Due to Hurricane Helene, all the reasonable routes from Sevier County to eastern North Carolina were closed. To find a passable road, I had to detour north to Wytheville, Virginia or
In 2013 I was job hunting, and I had enough money to live in a house with utilities and internet or I had enough money to take my tent and my car and travel to see things that I had never had the opportunity to see. My kids dubbed the trip the Gypsy Adventures and I
