Girls' Road Trip 2013

There's nothing I love more than being on the homestead, but every once in a while I find it is good to get away for a bit. I like to have new experiences whenever I can, and I always end up appreciating what I have even more when I return home. This past week I had one of the most fun trips of my life with two of my best girlfriends, Heather and Angela. We decided early this year to take a road trip together and agreed our initial destination would be New Orleans! Our first stop there was Café Du Monde for the world famous beignets (fried squares of dough dusted in powdered sugar) and café au laits. We decided to go through the take out line and eat our beignets behind the restaurant in a cute little area with the most beautiful doors.

From there we spent the rest of the day exploring the city. We took a little ride on the trolley, just because, and kind of got out of the way a bit so we ended up walking the rest of the day.

We saw the farmers market, flea market, Jackson Square, and visited the St. Louis Cathedral.

St. Louis Cathedral

The cathedral is absolutely gorgeous with old wooden pews, stained glass windows, and murals all over the ceiling and walls. Plus it was air-conditioned, so it gave us a nice break to sit and cool off a bit after walking around in the humid heat all morning long.

After Jackson Square, we headed over to Bourbon Street. We really wanted to see it, but the nightlife scene isn't our thing, so we made sure to go during the day (apparently it can get kind of dangerous at night as well). On the way down to Bourbon, we heard some awesome live music, so we stopped and watched the street performers for a bit. They were amazing! I even took a quick video so you could get the authentic New Orleans experience.

I made sure to give them a few dollars before passing by. I love music and try to support the arts whenever I can.

Just a short walk past the performers, we reached Bourbon Street. It was neat to see all the different shops and signs, but we didn't end up spending too much time down there. We are glad we went to see it, but agreed it wasn't our favorite part of the trip (the smell didn't help much!).

One of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting the Garden District in New Orleans. The houses in this area are some of the most beautiful and grandiose I've ever seen. Heather was driving, so I enjoyed just looking out the window as we drove past all the estates.

I loved the marble staircase and dark entry doors.

After a quick bite to eat in the Garden District, we headed back downtown because we had a steamboat cruise planned for the evening. It was actually a crazy night, because just as we arrived at the dock, we saw a steamboat taking off into the Mississippi and thought we missed our cruise! We figured we could at least ride the ferry to get the river experience, so we rode that a couple times. After exiting the ferry, Heather saw another steamboat getting ready to take off at a different location on the dock and come to find out, that was the boat we were supposed to board! The gates were closed, but we made it just in time to get on board before the boat took off. Phew! It was such a lovely cruise and when the sun went down all the buildings looked so pretty all lit up.

After the cruise it was getting late and we were exhausted, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel. The next morning we were heading to Gulf Shores, AL to spend a day at the beach, but things didn't go as planned and we didn't make it there until just before dark. We did stop at Gulfport, MS on the way there and checked out their beach after some shopping at the awesome outlet mall. We weren't too impressed with the beach there, but we did see some of the cutest gulls. I tried to get close to them to get their photo but they kept flying away from me! I did manage to get this shot which I think turned out really cute.

The next morning we headed home, and stopped in Memphis for an early dinner on Beale Street at Miss Polly's Soul City Cafe. This was actually my favorite meal of the whole trip because it reminded me so much of my grandma's "soul food" cooking that I grew up with. It was so delicious!

I've always wanted to see the ducks at the Peabody Hotel, so before leaving the city we checked them out and I was in love! I didn't get to see them take their parade through the hotel to the elevators back up to their rooftop home, but maybe I'll get to see it someday.

We really packed a lot into our four day road trip and I have so many happy and funny memories that I will cherish forever. I kept joking that we'll have so many stories from this trip to tell our kids someday. The kind of stories we will tell them over and over again and they'll know them by heart and get sick of us telling them, haha.

For me, the best part of coming home is seeing all the animals. Gizmo seems to have grown so much in just a few days while I was gone! As much as I enjoyed returning home, I think David was even more thrilled to see me. He had to tend the homestead all by himself while I was gone, and this week was a crazy busy week of band camp for him, so he had his hands full. Maintaining the garden and tending to all the animals while working full-time is definitely hard for just one person. But he did a great job and the garden totally exploded while I was gone.

It was a fun trip, but it is good to be home :)

~Tammy

PS - I'm still playing catch up, but I look forward to checking in with all my blogging friends soon!