The Little Motel That Could

The Inn at Mulberry Grove turned out to be my little slice of heaven. Perhaps because they had good coffee. Perhaps because it tries so hard to be a fancy little motel.

Pros: Air conditioning was like a refrigerator. Bed and pillows were comfortable. Much better pillows than all our other accommodations. Best coffee ever.

So-so: had to ask for extra towels every day. The hot breakfast was a hot continental breakfast, so the non-carbohydrate breakfast options were minimal.

But my teen got to try sausage gravy and biscuits. That was a hit.

Con: the hotel has a very good location 15 minutes from historic downtown Savannah right off I-95. The motel sits on Rt 21 which is a thin major roadway and the main vein into Savannah. Rush hour traffic is heinous and the clerk says there are accidents every night. It took us 15 minutes to get onto Savannah but more than an hour to get back.

We had two main adventures at this motel. My teen found a feral kitten. And wanted to save it.

And my teen found an old pay washer and dryer. We were trapped at the motel because of the traffic so we went to the Pilot truck stop across the highway to forage for dinner and look for laundry soap.

We paid $10 for small bottles of laundry soap and fabric softener only to insert our money and find out we couldn’t get the washer to work.

This seems fitting for our adventures, not mine obviously: Devil Went Down to Georgia, washing machine cover

Savannah, we are here!

Day 4

We arrived in Savannah about 4 pm last night and checked into The Inn at Mulberry Grove. The prettiest motel I’ve ever seen.

For less than $50/night, I finally got a decent cup of coffee.

But I digress…

Last night we went downtown and ended up getting New York pizza got dinner at Vinnie Van GoGos. Wonderful artsy pun. I had a local blonde beer: Tybee Isle Blonde.

And then we visited the River Street area and bought sundresses and met a man who made palm roses.

Day 3 on the Road

We had hoped to explore the Cape Fear area, but nothing seems to open until 10 a.m. So we headed out of the hotel fairly early, after the teens used the luggage trolley and the toilet broke.

The Red Roof Inn was decent, even if the plumbing was unpredictable. The staff was friendly. The pool cute. Yes, I went swimming. And the breakfast was bagels, cereal and danish.

The coffee has been getting progressively worse.

So we hit the road, and almost immediately, we saw this truck (which broke my heart):

I used to be a vegetarian. I used to buy my eggs and milk and meat at a local farm where I saw the chickens running around.

But this is the reality for an industrialized farm. This is how these chickens live. Many of them were upside down. I’m wondering if they have ever seen daylight before. I am wondering if they are off to slaughter.

I said all these things in the car.

That it is completely possible these chickens spent their entire lives in a warehouse style barn in the dark. They might have seen daylight for the first time this morning as they were loaded onto this truck without leaving these awful cages.

The sunlight may have terrified them and burned their little eyes. And then the truck started moving.

Have you ever ridden in the back of a open air pick-up truck? I have. Imagine being a small bird and all that wind.

And then when the truck finally stops, they are killed.

All so agribusiness can make money.

Support local farms! Support small business! Think about where your food comes from.

On a brighter note, we have two whoopee cushions in the car. Or we did. My daughter tried to get Gayle, but failed. So Gayle kept that one to have her turn.

My daughter was messing with the other one and popped it.

I also introduced my daughter to the concept of reveille as a bugle call. So now she might try to master that. After she gets Taps.

Route 95 in the South has lots of day lilies and sunflowers everywhere.

Southern eating and hospitality

In our travels in North Carolina today, we experienced some southern cooking and southern hospitality.

We stopped in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, for lunch at Gardner’s BBQ buffet. It wasn’t exactly what everyone had in mind, but it proved an amazing experience.

Am I using that phrase in every blog post this trip?

The food was good. Not gourmet or incredible but all the southern classics were represented. New Brunswick stew, collard greens, chicken necks, black eyed peas, barbecue, liver, hush puppies, fried chicken, ribs, good old American Mac and Cheese…

The teenagers both had some liver. That impressed me.

Service was phenomenal. The waitress was very patient with my talkative daughter who thought she could be grown up and have unsweetened iced tea instead of southern sweet tea.

She even gave us beverages for the car ride.

And the girls? Can’t get used to Southern accents.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Girl

Since we were staying so close to Petersburg Battlefield, we thought we’d run over and experience some Civil War history before we left town.

If I remember tonight, I will upload a photo gallery. Very. Cool. Place.

The visitors center wasn’t open. We arrived too early in the morning. But the National Park is gorgeous. Sadly, we found a gazillion mosquitoes. So by 9 am I was already providing a hardy breakfast for my insect companions.

The Battlefield has been meticulously groomed to not only preserve the history, but uses tall grass to indicate where various forces stood during battles.

Video of tall grass

The teens fell in love with the cannons. And we had fun wandering around. Then we saw the ranger raise the flag so we went into the visitors center and watched the movie.

OH MY.

The American Civil War is such a sad period in American history. The aggression among own our people. The race issue. The slavery issue. Our own people tearing our nation apart, destroying ourselves and our resources.

The battles in Petersburg were pivotal to the end of the Civil War, and some of the strategy involved were amazing. During the Battle of the Crater, the Northern Forces dug a tunnel under the Southern camp and filled it with something like 8000 pounds of gunpowder.

The resulting explosion was the 19th century version of a nuclear mushroom cloud.

And the men ran into the deep fiery crater to fight. Might be worth googling. Amazing story.

And then my daughter found a bugle in the gift shop.

She’s wanted a bugle for years.

A real brass Calvary bugle.

So she used her birthday money to buy it.

PJ the Bear Visits DC

We arrived in Washington DC in good time: by 11 a.m. M and our Indian friends gave us a tour of the house they recently purchased, which right now has had the interior gutted and reframed.

We then headed to M’s apartment where our friends made us homemade Indian food that was out of this world. Frances had never had Indian before so that was her first adventure of the day.

We took the girls to the National Zoo, and while we did PJ the Bear visited the big monuments and the White House.

Reunited with PJ, we are now taking the scenic route (Maryland 210/Indian Head Highway) toward Richmond, Va.

For more on our adventures as they happen, follow me on Instagram: angelackerman.

One Hour Until DC

We had the kids in the car and some munchkins on hand by 7:20. My daughter has already had about a dozen munchkins and has started on candy.

We have taken I-95 through Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. We should be in Washington DC before 11.

My friend and traveling companion on my overseas journeys, M, has purchased a house in DC. We will be touring it and having lunch with him and some Indian friends. Yeah for homemade Indian food!

We have no real plans for the week. Gayle has made no reservations. Except for having to be in Savannah in Wednesday to be at Juliette Gordon Low’s house. We have reservations for that.

Road Trip Preparations

My good friend Gayle and I love to have adventures, usually day trips or hikes or going to a trampoline park on my 40th birthday.

Gayle loves a good road trip.

Gayle is a lifelong Girl Scout.

Gayle’s great-niece, Frances, and my daughter, Eva, are in the same Girl Scout troop. Both girls have a birthday next week. Frances will be 16 (ack!) and my girl will be 14 (double ack!). Their girl scouting days are coming to a close and Gayle wanted to take them to see the birthplace of Girl Scout founder, Juliette Gordon Low, in Savannah, Georgia.

We leave on Sunday.

Gettysburg Road Trip

I work retail. This means I rarely get predictable patterns in my schedule, several days off in a row or a regular weekend off with my family. My husband works at a local college. He never has an easy time with vacations in the summer or January because there’s always a new semester around the corner.

My daughter has reached her preteen years and we only have a certain amount of time before she won’t want to spend time with her parents.

After our very successfully trip to Barnegat solo Monday, I thought a family road trip could be a great way to spend this weekend as it may be the only weekend left in the summer where no one in the family has commitments.

We ended up in Gettysburg, using TripAdvisor to book our hotel at more or less the last minute.

The drive went smoothly. We arrived at the Gettysburg YWCA around 1 pm and (after using the restroom) retrieved the directions for the local Volkssport walks. Gettysburg has 3. We took directions for all three. Even signed up for one of the award patches since daughter has decided she would like to collect them.

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We immediately embarked upon Walk 1. We knew we needed to find lunch. We walked to the armory, through a residential neighborhood and into town. Gettysburg was having a town wide yard sale today so that made the initial walk very colorful.

My friend Gayle had recommended eating at the blue building in the center of town. We departed from the 5k directions to view our dining options (especially since “the blue building” had a twenty minute wait at 2 in the afternoon). We had narrowed it down to Eddie’s Texas Lunch or Thai. The family agreed on Thai, Thai Classic IV to be precise.

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Very tasty food. Child had cashew chicken. I had panang curry. Darrell had something with noodles and broccoli. And very delicious shrimp cakes and dumplings to share.

We also picked through the merchandise at the army goods store. We followed a military convoy on the way down and enjoyed seeing the various trucks and equipment in various camo patterns. At one point, child said, “there are a lot of hot guys in those trucks.”

Yup. That’s my girl.

By the end of our meal, child was very anxious to see the hotel. She’d only every stayed in a hotel once before with her girl scout troop. So, armed with cupcakes from Jimmy Cuomo’s we finished our first 5k of the weekend.

My husband and I decided to share our cupcakes, one caramel latte and one Boston creme pie. Similar to the people walking around in Civil War costume, we had our own reenactment. We repeated a scene from our wedding. But I look so much more “badass” now.

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My daughter can’t believe the luxury here at our two-star America’s Best Value Inn. A hairdryer. A bathtub. A closet. Extra pillows. An ice machine. A pool. She thinks this is the best place ever.

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As soon as I can extract her from the pool, we have a candlelight ghost tour scheduled for tonight.