. Thank you for your patience as I slowly crank out some travel articles and updates.  I feel like we’ve been traveling so much that it’s hard to keep up.  What an awesome problem to have, huh?

After returning from Europe and spending a couple weeks in Florida, we decided it would be fun to drive cross-country last week.

Therefore, we drove “Sexy Lexi” (my little 11-yr old Lexus SUV) to Minnesota and it WAS super fun!

Day 1

We left Ocala, Florida around 11am with the plan to drive for about 8-9 hours. We drove out of Florida, through Georgia, and into Tennessee.

This is a pic from the bathroom of a travel plaza in Jackson, GA which touted on several billboards that they had the most bathrooms in Georgia so, of course, we had to stop.  HAHA!

We stayed that night in Chattanooga, a quaint historic river/mountain town.

Here’s a car we parked next to in Chattanooga. This is kind of my dream car – a pearl white 911 turbo cabriolet so you have some time to save up for my birthday present next July! 😎

Unfortunately, we were only in Chattanooga long enough to eat dinner, drink a TALL beer, and get a good night’s sleep.

It should be noted that Chattanooga is one of Bill’s favorite small, old towns (old for the US at least). It is set along side a river and is surrounded by mountains. There is a lot of revitalization happening to restore and renovate old buildings, and the food scene is definitely on an upward trend. We talked about going back sometime to spend more time there!

Day 2 – Change of Plans

We planned that this would be our BIG day of driving – about 11-12 hours.

Right before pulling out of the hotel parking ramp, Bill turned to me and said “I think we should take a little detour to see one of his properties in McMinnville, Tennessee. It will only add like an hour to our drive.”

With our already-long drive ahead of us, I immediately shook my head and rolled my eyes at the thought of driving even more that day!

However, he reminded me that seeing the fall colors along the drive was one of the main reasons we were road-tripping to begin with. He also suggested it would be a mistake to be so close to this unique property and NOT see it.

Once again, Bill was right…

I realized I would regret it if we didn’t take a detour through the mountains and see his property. I had two little voices in my head: one saying YOLO and the other was my bestie (and cousin) Jennifer saying “You can sleep when you’re dead!”

Day 2 – On the Road

(Still semi-reluctantly), I agreed and we were off to McMinnville, Tennessee – grabbing coffee from a local coffee shop on our way out of Chattanooga.

As it turned out, I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad we took the extra time to drive around the mountains of Tennessee!

It was a beautiful, sunny, and crisp Fall day. I got to see whole new side of Tennessee that I hadn’t seen before. It became clear to me that day why property in the mountains of Tennessee was so desirable.

I was also surprised that the leaves in Tennessee were still pretty green. We expected more leaves to have turned red, orange, and yellow by then in mid-Oct but no such luck. Regardless, it was a great experience traveling among the mountains!

Here are a couple pics from the mountains of Tennessee…

After walking and taking pictures of one of Bill’s properties, we squiggled our way through the rest of Tennessee, the Western part of Kentucky, St. Louis and Eastern part of Missouri, a little bit of Illinois, and then into Southern Iowa.

This day was especially fun because I was able to see TWO new states that I had never seen before: Kentucky and Missouri. Bill got to see THREE new states: Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa.

Obviously neither of us had seen the iconic Arch in St. Louis so it was cool to see. We basically just drove by it while snapping pics from the interstate but agreed we would like to return sometime to visit longer.

We ultimately arrived in Coralville, Iowa to spend the night. Coralville is the neighboring town right next to Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa (the Hawkeyes).

It was around 10:30pm when we got to the hotel, and we were super tired. We were still full from our gas station snacks, so we decided to forgo dinner and just go to sleep.

Day 3

We woke up refreshed, enjoyed a nice breakfast near our hotel, and made our way towards Minnesota.  We only had about 6 hours of driving ahead of us.

Here is a pic inside the restaurant where we had breakfast in Coralville, Iowa (highly recommend):

It was pretty uneventful driving through Iowa and Southern Minnesota, but it was also nice and peaceful.

Interestingly, we noticed the leaves had changed significantly more in Iowa and Minnesota than they had in the other states we had just been.

We made it to Arden Hills, Minnesota around 4pm – in plenty of time to meet my family at the Tavern Grill.  It was so much fun to seeing everyone – even if we had to wait over an hour for a table due to staffing shortages…

This is me with my cousin Megan and her squirmy but adorable baby, Jack (sorry that he’s a little blurry):

Bill and I spent the next four days working and spending time with family and friends in Minnesota.

Bill’s 50th Birthday

We left the car in Minnesota and flew back to Florida the same day as Bill’s 50th birthday.

Within seconds of boarding our flight in Minnesota, we saw a Southwest Airlines banner celebrating their 50th anniversary so we had to get a pic of Bill in front of the sign on his 50th birthday.

I know many of you know this story but I FAILED to actually get a pic of him in front of the sign but I was able to subsequently cobble together in Canva a pic of the banner (sent to me by a friend) and a pic I took of Bill.  Enjoy:

All in all, it was a great trip and piqued our interest in spending more time traveling around the US instead of just focus on international travel. Perhaps you’ll find us road-tripping more in the US in the future….

Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions about our trip. I was surprised by how easy it was to drive cross-country and work!

More importantly, let me know if you are thinking about road-tripping or if you have recommendations for places to go!