Now that November is almost over, it’s time to end the “official” celebration and plan for the coming decade! But first, a review of the final few days of the vacation…
The last two stops on the trip were Florence, Alabama, and Franklin, Tennessee. In addition to visiting with friends in both locations, I wanted to spend some time looking around at both areas for possible retirement locations. If all goes according to plan, I should be able to join the retired in about five years am trying to figure out where I want park myself. While my current location — the Mississippi Gulf Coast — certainly has it’s charm, the heat, humidity, and hurricanes are more than I want to deal with in my golden years.
The Florence visit started with dinner, drinks, and conversation at the hotel with some college buddies. We were all in the same social club at The W — The Lancers — and have been friends for about 40 years. Saturday was spent riding around and looking at the area in and around Florence, making extremely politically incorrect jokes, and generally being silly. It was wonderful! Had a splendiferous brunch to start the day in the downtown area — so very cute! — and ended the day with a lovely Italian meal at a restaurant just a block or so away. Not sure how many miles we put on the car between those two meals, but I’m glad Regina was driving because I have no idea where all we went. Ha! I was happy to have such fun company and enjoyed catching up with my friends.
After breakfast at the hotel, I hit the road Sunday to drive the last leg of the Natchez Trace from Florence to Franklin. The trip started out well; it was cool and as usual very little traffic on the road. Was able to make one stop and got a few pictures before the rain set in, but that was it. There were several waterfall sites I was looking forward to seeing, but it was just raining too hard to be able to get out and explore. Guess that just means another trip up that way to do that exploration! But I made it to the very end of the Natchez Trace, so I accomplished the end-to-end drive!
Got to Franklin and spent the first night at a charming little guest house I found through VRBO. So cute! Met up with another college friend, Julie, and we had a very nice dinner in town then I went back to the guest house to watch a little football and relax.
Julie and I met up mid-morning Monday and first took a tour of nearby Murfreesboro. Franklin is an adorable little town, but all it took was a ride-through to realize it was out definitely out of my price range when it came to a retirement location. So we went to M-boro first, and it was adorable! We saw lots of houses near the University that we would have loved to buy and fix up. We planned renovations and new landscaping and all kinds of fun stuff. The downtown area is charming, lots of cute shops and very nice people. We had lunch at a barbeque restaurant and talked ourselves out of ice cream and pastries, though they all looked and smelled wonderful! We did make it back to Franklin and looked around there as well and made a stop for an afternoon coffee. Julie dropped me off at the hotel for the night and I spent the evening relaxing before the long drive home.
Decided to return along the conventional route, aka the Interstate system. As much as I enjoyed the drive on the Trace, I was ready to get home and sleep in my own bed and cook some food for myself. Yes, I miss my cooking when I’m away from home too long. Stopped at the Alabama Welcome Center to look at the rocket — I mean, how can you pass that up? — then just cruised on the rest of the way. Not a bad drive, got home before dark, and was able to unload and relax a little while before going to bed.
Total mileage for the trip: 1,362.7 miles on Mykos, not sure how many more on Regina and Julie’s vehicles.
I have so many more road trips in mind going forward, beginning with a Christmas visit to Joplin, Missouri to see Mom and the rest of the family there. May look around Fayetteville, Arkansas, while I’m in the area as a possible retirement locale. And, of course, once the Covid scare is over and life gets back to normal I want to get back to some of the other things I want to do, like skydiving!
I’ll put up another blog post soon with more details and pictures from along The Natchez Trace. I definitely plan to re-visit the upper end, from Florence to Franklin, and stop to see the sites I missed.
The commitment to do something “new” continues until, well, until I can’t find anything new to do. You’re never too old to try new things, go new places, and learn new things. Join me! No, seriously, join me! If you have something new you’d like to do with me, just let me know. I can’t promise to make every adventure happen, but I want to have as many as I can.
That Sassy Age 