Smith Plantation House in Roswell, GA
Roswell, Georgia – just a 30 minute drive from downtown Atlanta is an enclave of historic charm. The city’s historic downtown offers the Southern Trilogy Pass, where visitors can tour three historic, yet distinctly different early residences of the early settlers from the early to mid 1800s.
I don’t like cold weather and being from Louisiana, I don’t have much experience with snow. Yet I found myself bundled in ski pants, ear muffs and snow boots when we visited Sapphire Valley Ski Resort in North Carolina this past weekend.
Although, the resort offers snow skiing, we decided to try tubing instead. The skiing seemed too complicated given that our children have never skied. When we suggested ski school to them, Thing 2 freaked out. “No, I want Daddy to teach me to ski,” she cried out. Thing 1 was indifferent as she’s not really an outdoor type of person. (more…)
In 2013, our vacation plans called for a week-long trip to Washington DC and Virginia as soon as school ended in May. In retrospect, we should have waited a few days. After picking up our kids directly from school on their last day, we stopped in Charlotte to have dinner with some friends and then drove as far as Durham, NC that night. Colonial Williamsburg was crowded when we arrived around 11:30 the next day (which also happened to be the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend). By the time we got to DC on Sunday afternoon, everyone was tired and cranky. We learned a very valuable lesson – give our kids at least a day or two to unwind from the school year before going on a week-long trip! (more…)
My husband thought I was nuts – completely nuts. We were visiting my hometown of Shreveport, La. when I said, “Instead of going straight back to Atlanta, we could go up through Arkansas, over to Tennessee, spend the night in Memphis and then get back to Atlanta tomorrow night.” Within a few hours, we found ourselves in Hot Springs where I had vacationed as a child.
Things had changed since those trips in the 1970’s. Well, not everything had changed, especially not the Arlington Hotel. This historic hotel has looked the same since 1924 and will continue to do so until a natural disaster comes along. I fondly recall walking with my parents across the street from the Arlington into the Hot Springs National Park at dusk. It was the first time I had ever seen fireflies, which we called lightning bugs. (more…)