"we''ll cash in our plane tickets, give you the cash so that you can buy food for your trip, and we'll come along with you."

We have just spent two days driving around the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, but haven’t managed to get into the city to see any of the sights! I won’t bore you with the reasons why. We feel tired out, we feel like skipping town and will head to Falls Creek State Park in Pikeville for a relaxing two days in the countryside. This is where Laurie’s grandma grew up, raising and training "Tennessee Walker” horses. Her land was sold years ago to the adjacent state park. Not much to say about Tennessee yet, so I would like to entertain you with a crazy unexpected journey

Once a big sister, always a big sister

Last week heading through Mississippi on 1-55, we stopped in the small town of Batesville en route to the campground. Laurie went into the grocery store to pick up supplies while I took Marley for a short walk. As I passed by boarded-up store after boarded-up store, feeling the tremendous sadness of the place, a diminutive

"You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog"

I'm sending out a big woofety-woof-woof to all my dog pals out there, you know who you are. So, I know we talk about this all the time, but honestly our furless-bipeds can be infuriatingly clueless sometimes. Let me give you my latest example:

Laurie sums up the past two days and our tornado experience

Just left Mississippi, after driving through some of the back country, far from the main thoroughfares, where the poverty is heartbreaking. Houses crumbling on their foundations, often with tons of trash or beat up cars in the yard. Whole towns were boarded up, with maybe one supermarket left standing. The only businesses that seem to be able to survive here are government-funded — the post offices, schools, WIC offices.

Hola from NOLA

For the last four days we were having a blast in New Orleans. Luckily, we had a family friend Elizabeth Shannon to give us an insider’s view of this complicated city. Elizabeth's an artist and activist living in the funky artsy Bywater section of NOLA. As soon as we arrived (and secured a rental car — how blissfuly small it felt!), she invited us over to her gorgeous studio in a former warehouse with 25 foot ceilings. She was doing a costume fitting for her best friend Dawn Dedeaux, the “queen” of the artists’ parade that kicks off the Mardi Gras season. The Krewe de Vieux parade

"You all are arriving at a very good time. Carnival hits the streets this weekend with an artist parade called The Krewe du Vieux..." See below:

The past four days have been lovely. More from the campsite at St. Andrew's State Park in Florida before I move ahead to the content of the post title.

One stop away from New Orleans

It’s cold but sunny and we walk, walk, walk. Several times a day. 

We see dozens of blue heron perched in bushes and on the beach of "alligator pond." We see large white egrets complacently standing in empty campsites not 15 feet away. We see a family of five deer in the morning eating berries; they look up at us as we pass (with Marley) and resume eating. We see signs depicting bears and bear cubs crossing the road. Notices about bobcats and rattle snakes. Marley is on a leash all day, but she has accepted this. We see a large pod

A beautiful beach, huge RVs, and plenty of churches

Churches in Carrabelle Beach, population of 2,842 people. So many options, try them all!

• First Baptist Church

Not so pretty

We have just left Rt. 95 South and the landscape of 200+ year old oaks and drooping Spanish Moss. Mostly there are tall pines in view. The air is different, the shadows are shorter. The sun is hot. It may be too early to tell, but we appear to have left behind a certain southern charm. And yesterday we had our first “unpleasant” series of events.

For the first time

Swamp Dog

The nomadic roaming feels good to me. I love arriving in a campground after dark (and, sometimes under the cover of dense southern-coast fog) and waking up to a new world; one night it's along a tidal basin, another beside miles of dunes and palm trees. Here, outside Savannah, we're camped in an old oak forrest that has an understory of palm trees! Each morning