DRAFT
My sister Kathy and I were both born and raised in Oregon but haven’t lived in the same state since I was 12 and she graduated from college and moved to Upstate New York to settle in and raise her family. After retiring from work as a school administrator, she escaped the snowy north by moving to Florida 15 years and continued her work as an educator. Meanwhile both of her sons married and moved to Oregon. Retired again, she decided to become an Oregonian once more, chose a beautiful beach house south of Waldport and prepared to market her beautifully renovated little Florida house. When she called to ask if I’d be willing to fly to Florida and share an epic 3000 mile road trip with her back to Oregon, it was a quick YES.
Counting my layover in Georgia, the trip included 14 states:
Kathy divided the miles into chunks of about 500, planned the hotel stops, and gathered notes about what interesting quick stops we could make each morning and afternoon to break up the days. Many of these states were new ones for me and not necessarily ones I’ve ever desired to visit. Each one was beautiful, though, and culturally fascinating. Here are some highlights.
We left Spring Hill on a Sunday, drove by the capitol in Tallahassee and slept the 1st night near the beautiful beach in Biloxi, Mississippi - lots of empty lots lining the beach road, courtesy of Katrina. Nice breezy dinner and hot sauce shopping for Mike topped off the day.
We drove by Jefferson Davis’ home (nice setting but underwhelming story) and the definite highlight of the day was detouring in order to spend some time in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We listened to Pete Fountain’s ‘Basin Street Blues’ as we drove down Basin Street.
In the afternoon we stopped by Vicksburg National Military Park and the impressive USS Cairo, one of the first American ironclad war ships.
We slept in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and headed Tuesday morning into Little Rock which surprised us with it’s awesomeness. We drove by Central High School, site of both the Little Rock Nine desegregation crisis and the Epperson v. Arkansas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
Topeka, Kansas
