Category: Introduction

It has been quite a while since I wrote my last blog. A lot of time has passed and a lot of trips have been completed.

Thanks to the government shutdown, I have a lot more free time to write about the trips we have taken and the trips we would like to take. Please

Keep checking my site for updated stories and information.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Greg

We just got back from a whirlwind trip to Disney and Universal Studios in Orlando. We got on the road last Friday from New Orleans and returned Saturday evening. Wow! Between driving roughly 10 hours each way and then going close to nonstop at the parks, we truly need a vacation to recover.

Our son, who is now 7, and our daughter, 10, we’re both troopers as was my wife, as I think I may have over planned this trip. More about that in a different post.

For the first time we decided to brave both Universal and Disney with the kids. We always worried that Universal was for older kids. Both children had a great time there.

They are both great parks in their own ways, but they could also learn from each other. The food and the trip planning app for Disney are much better, but the express pass that comes with a Universal Hotel stay is far better than Disney’s difficult and less generous fast pass. I’ll spend more time discussing our experiences and comparing the two parks in future posts.

Until then…

For now, we will try to recover from this whirlwind vacation.

For 4th of July weekend we decided to do something different. Instead of going to the beach or hanging out around town in New Orleans, we decided to do a fun and educational trip to Natchez, MS and the surrounding areas. As we started on the interstate from my in-laws house on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, and saw the traffic on I-12 heading east to the Florida coast, we realized we made the right choice.

Natchez is roughly 3 hours from New Orleans, but I hadn’t been back there since I was my daughters age. It is a town of old wealth and old poverty. The downtown is beautiful with homes dating back to the late 18th century. As you drive into the downtown area sitting nearly 200 ft above the river, it like traveling back in time 150 years. The beautiful antebellum homes, spared from the civil war battles, have been well taken care of and are spread evenly throughout the city.  

The more modern buildings especially those further from downtown have not received that kind of care and many a building is boarded up, probably for a good long while. Kudzu seems to hold together every steep hill and bluff leading to the river. It is crazy. It seems like the well groomed yards of the downtown are the only deterrent from the kudzu taking over the entire city.

We checked in at the Starling’s Rest B&B, but that was just to checkin. Usually we don’t do B&Bs with the kids, but this was different. They then sent us about 2 miles away to our place, which was a two bedroom apartment connected to the Routhland Plantation home, built in 1815. Once belonging to John Routh considered to be “at one time the largest cotton planter in the world.” It was a beautiful home with a great porch where you could waste your days rocking away and drinking mojitos and mint juleps. 

The two bedroom was just off to the side of the house and  is connected to the first floor.  It was very nice, however it was as my wife described it as “I think I’m staying in someone’s great aunt’s house. Nice but every drawer is full of stuff. Wedding dress. Got it. Jewelry. That too. Old linens. Yep. Bills. Uh huh. Hoop skirt with antibellum dresses. You know it. Even a drawer with 6 nail clippers and an old retainer. But no iron!!!!”

It’s got an amazing amount of character and we like it a lot. However, no maid service. It’s more like a VRBO. 

Our first Natchez sunset over the river. More Natchez posts to follow.

For quite some time now, my wife and I have talked about doing a travel blog. This is a brave new venture that we have decided to undertake. We hope to provide you, the reader, with everything from family travel tips to hidden jewels that we have discovered during our many adventures. We believe that travel should be fun, educational, adventurous, and sometimes even challenging.

Like most parents of young children, we have learned to adapt, to pick our battles, tweak our plans, and often times realize too late that we have bitten off more than we can chew. Everyone has done that at some point, especially when travelling with young children. We hope to provide you with some family travel wisdom to help you decrease your stress and increase your enjoyment as you discover with us the ins and outs of family travel.

Please bear with us, as we learn the ways of the blogger. We will try to respond to questions and comments as soon as possible and update our blog with new posts at least once a week.

Thank you.

Greg