Tallahassee Tales

Posted by mrshollynewman on February 28, 2013 · 10 Comments 

Eric and I departed Texas on February 23, heading for Tallahassee, Florida.  My second cousin, Amelia, and her family live there, and they graciously offered to host us for a few days of our journey.  We were hoping to meet up with another cousin, Becky, but she was off to Daytona for the race that weekend.  Maybe next time!

Our journey took us through the deep south, where I was born and raised for a few years.  We passed through my birth city, Lafayette, Louisiana – yes, that’s correct: I was born south of I-10, and may officially claim to be a Cajun as a result.  Onward to Mississippi for a quick stop at the Welcome Center in Bay St. Louis, which happens to be very near NASA Stennis Space Center (very recently opened to the public).  The Mississippi Welcome Center was home to one of the Lunar Landing Modules, which was pretty darned cool.

The Eagle has landed!

We continued eastward, until our growling bellies got the better of us.  After a quick consultation with Yelp!, we decided on The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint.  I should have taken some pictures of this place.  It was unbelievable – built from scraps and bits of other buildings, with a gravel floor.  We secretly wondered how in the world it passed health inspections, but oh my, it was tasty.  We shared a gigantic sampler platter, containing seven kinds of barbequed meat.  Needless to say, when we arrived at Amelia’s house a few hours later, we were still stuffed.

Late that night, we arrived in Tallahassee, to be greeted by my cousin.  Upon later discussion, we decided we hadn’t seen each other in about six years.  Never again!  We had a great time getting to know her husband and little boy over the course of our visit.  Our hosts were overwhelmingly generous, providing room and board and all the Dr. Seuss we could read!

Baby Kurt, Rick & Amelia – a quick snapshot before work one day!

We really got along well with Amelia and Rick.  They are such friendly, welcoming people, and quite interesting, as well.  Rick makes his own beer and Amelia makes wine – I am very intrigued by this, and will definitely follow-up on the wine details, once we are permanently settled again.

While the family was at work (and preschool), Eric and I enjoyed some biking in Tallahassee.  Bike lanes abound in this city, and we found it to be pretty rider-friendly.  One day, we took off from Amelia’s house and rode to the trailhead of the local Rails-to-Trails path, the Tallahassee-St. Mark’s Trail, which we continued to St. Mark’s.  We ate lunch at a biker-bar there (mainly motorcycles, but our Spandex was welcome, too), and rode back to Amelia’s, giving us a 45-mile round trip for the day.  Not bad.

Another day, we returned to the same spot, this time on mountain bikes.  Munson Trails was my first experience on a mountain bike, and I had lots of fun.  Eric warned me that I may not like “the real thing,” as I am very unlikely to see trails this easy ever again in my life.  Really – here is a video of a two-year-old riding the Munson Trails.  I did have one encounter with a tree in a very narrow section, which resulted in some scrapes and bruises, but overall, had a great experience.

My first MTB!

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay with family, and the beauty and weather of Tallahassee.  We would have loved to have stayed longer, but we were actually on a schedule this week, since we had to be in Cape Canaveral on Friday for a rocket launch!!!  We were sad to leave our family, but perhaps the saddest of all was our new pal, Pavlov (isn’t that the best dog name ever?  BTW – he didn’t salivate once!).

Me and Pavlov, in his fort.

Until next time,

-H

Filed under Travel Logs · Tagged with cycling, Florida, Mountain biking, Tallahassee