Jekyll and Bride

It's been a week since last updating and plenty has happened since our time in Kentucky. Unfortunately this is a phone update so there are no photographic or video updates yet. Read on if you have a wee bit of time off!

Sadly a really exciting event of the last 7 days was passing the 5000 mile mark.

Having spent a day relaxing in Kentucky last Monday we moved on down south. Both the weather and accents were becoming noticably more and more different. A night in Athens, Georgia was Tuesday having experienced an adventurous drive through the Great Smoky Mountains. Just before Tennessee hits Georgia there exists a truly bizarre duo of tacky tourist towns: Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. For a mid september weekday to have so many tourists seemed odd. Fair enough if these people were there to experience the wonderful Gt Smoky Mts National Park, but we suspect they were more likely there for Dollywood, International Fertility statues museum, Penguin Playhouse, a giant titanic museum, Christ museum and gardens, The Incredible Christmas Place, and possibly most exciting of all - Hillbilly Golf. An elderly couple from California that we met on the cable car on the way up to the first tee said that if they do nothing else in Gatlinburg, they make Hillbilly Golf a priority! Surely this was not what John Muir had in mind when he conjured up the idea of National Parks! Aviemore and the Royal Mile in Scotland could learn a lot from these places - there are plenty of ways to up the tackyness, no matter how bad us Scots think these places already are. But thankfully, once in the mountains the only distractions were deciding which window to look out of for wonderful views over the park.

Next on our agenda was the open landscape of Georgia on the way to the east coast and Savannah. We had been recommended here by a few people along the way. As nice as it was to be in a city with cobbled river streets, pretty garden squares, nice trees and a spanish feel, there was that all-too-familiar feel of tourism trying to pull you in. One shop we visited for postcards was manned by an Indian woman who immediately tried to hard sell us tshirts with pirates or pubs on the front and when we bought a joke postcard for a laugh she said we'd made a great choice and that the recipe for crab-cakes which adorned the front would be one we'd be sure to enjoy. Most exciting about Savannah was possibly the short journey over the river for 2 mintues in South Carolina. Our evening destination was Jekyll Island on the Atlantic coast. Situated near Brunswick and our first Chick-fil-A restaurant, we entered over numerous bridges and marshland amid a cracking sunset.

Thursday morning was a relief to find that the neighbouring clan of racoons had not stolen Mabel our car or let the air out of her tyres. We went for a swim on one of the most aesthetically pleasing beaches I've ever seen. Whether it was the fact that looking east was only water between us and home or the fact that it was early morning and all the other tourists were just waking up in their plush 5-star hotel beds, but it was good to be back by the sea. Continuing south we soon crossed into Florida - 21 states in 21 days! Taking the coastal road from pretty little St Augustine (where we tucked into a delicious, if not slightly ambitious, 20 inch pizza) to Daytona, we stopped for our second swim of the day in the Atlantic. The currents were phenomenal and the waves bigger even than than the 8 foot 3 Duncan who is growing ever taller as his legend spreads across this vast country. We took the car for a cheeky 2 mintue spin on Daytona Beach as it cost to stay. I have become quite fond of napping in the late afternoon while Duncan drives, so was fortunate enough to miss the terrible driving and equally bad mega-sprawl that is Disney. Like an awkaward growth on the side of a pretty girls face, Disney draws in many from far and wide keen to stare and enjoy, while others like us would rather simply acknowledge it's grotesqueness before moving on to far prettier aspects of the girl, like her accent. Duncan has been far more complimentary towards the southern accent, but our time in Florida has certainly grabbed a small part of my heart as the accent and words have slowly infiltrated my speech in a very endearing way.

Once in the Tampa region we had the delight of catching the end of Peter's stag do and re-acquainting ourselves with the scottish accent - 20 or so guy friends and family had made it over for his and Lindsays wedding. Friday was a chill out day helping prepare the hall for the wedding reception and getting to know some locals from the church before a lovely Cuban restaurant for dinner with wedding guests and bagpipes. If it was possible to handpick your family, our hosts would be up there on the grandparent list - we played Wii bowling and were soundly beaten before the wedding on Saturday. The wedding was beautiful and being in kilts with all our fellow countrymen was a great feeling. Ceilidh dancing with our new friends having talked it up the previous day was a fun time too. Sunday was another relaxing day getting to church in the morning, enjoying a lovely home cooked southern baked chicken, and heading to Siesta Keys for some proper relaxation.

Now it's Monday morning - day 25 of our roadtrip and I think I may have just written a lot more than I expected to! We are currently at 5275 miles and heading along the Gulf Coast. We plan to see New Orleans on Tuesday and into Texas. Oklahoma on Thursday and possibly Friday, before the Santa Fe region and north west for the beginning of the National Parks - Bryce Canyon, Zion, Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon to name but a few before we hit the west coast at some point - our wedding networking appeared to work as we have a number of new friends to say hi to across the southern leg of the journey.

As much fun as it was, and it really was fun, visiting old friends on the 1st leg down the east, we are both looking forward to the open road again and having a more open schedule with which to enjoy the beautiful south.

On a weird note to end - we passed 111111 miles for the cars history. Duncan is genuinely disappointed that we will witness no more big binary numbers on our travels unless we hit 1 million miles...