The Road Home

All right, here it is, the last post about my trip! Thanks for sticking with me! We really had an amazing time. I think I need to take an early year trip to some place warm every year!

We spent the night in Macon, GA, which is about halfway between Daytona Beach and Nashville. Of course we had to have breakfast at a place in our road food book, especially after I looked it up online and saw the sign!Looooove it.

Fries are the usual side with their breakfast plates! So good! I had over medium eggs and toast as well. This place is famous for their hot dogs, which are bright bright red for some reason. 

We talked about stopping in Rock City but decided against it because, shocking, it was still cold in Tennessee! We figured the top of a mountain probably wouldn't be fun without a coat. So I said "Well we might as well stop at some antique malls." Almost immediately we saw a sign for one and pulled over. It turns out it was meant to be!

Loved this old cooler. I don't know what I would do with it though.

Ok, so I pretty much freaked out when I found this. This piece has been haunting me for months! I saw a picture of one just like it at an estate sale and went to pick it up, but someone got it before me, then it got broken! I've seen a few more just like it, but they were always at least 75 dollars. But then I found this one! It is missing one of the puppies, and one is a little broken, but for 8 bucks I don't care! I can finally stop obsessing!

As we passed through Atlanta I got travis to stop at the Varsity again and get me a frosty orange. YUM. I really wish there was a place to get them here. We got home around 3, picked up the pugs from their baby sitter, and spend the rest of the night lounging around on the couch. It was a pretty excellent trip. 

Here are some close ups of the only vintage I got on my trip. We just didn't end up having time to thrift like I had planned! I love the atomic looking glass, and it is in one of my kitchen colors so I gave in and got it, even though I really don't need anymore glasses. 

The little banner on this whale says "For a whale of a man!" We are going to use it to hold our sponge by the sink. He is so cute. 

Here is my prized poodle. I really love it. The puppies are all shakers, I've seen sets where they have labels for different spices on their bellies. The broken puppy is attached to the mom by a pipe cleaner. I've seen single ones, so hopefully I can find one to fill the empty spot.

At least if I only got to do a little vintage shopping, i found something that I had really been looking for.

Castillo De san Marcos

On our way back to Nashville we stopped in St. Augustine to go the the Castillo de San Marcos! It is one of the oldest still standing structures in the whole United States! Travis was the one who really wanted to go there, and of course I went along with it because he is so sweet and goes along with whatever I want to do when we travel.



Pretty amazing this place has been standing over 330 years!
This is wear the soldiers used to sleep! So luxurious.
Having such a good time! I think this was the chapel maybe.

The walls were made of coquina, which is made of ancient shells that are bound together. We read on one of the signs that the coquina made it so that if a cannon ball hit the fort, it would just absorb it, like styrofoam, instead of breaking. Pretty interesting.

I love these dolphins.

My little history nerd.
We walked around town trying to find a post office drop so I could send my post cards. I usually forget and have to send them from home! Not fun. We tried to go to a place called The Bunnery, but it was closed. Thankfully there was an ice cream shop across the street. I got mint chocolate chop and augustine mud. It was vanilla with caramel and chocolate chips. Yum!
By about five we were on the road and on our way home. It is so sad when a trip is coming to an end!

A Day at the Beach

We got up early and went for a walk down the beach with my dad. We had talked about staying all day and going swimming but it was still too windy. My mom stayed behind at the hotel and laid out on the deck, where the wind was blocked. My dad gave Travis and hat and long sleeved shirt to wear, it made him look like he was wearing a disguise!We found an almost whole sand dollar!
I love these seagulls and their black feathers that look like hair!

We walked all the way down to the pier. I think it is a mile from the hotel. You can walk through the restaurant and then out onto the end of the fishing pier for a dollar.

It was so windy. This bird jumped up on the railing when I was walking towards him, then couldn't land. It was cracking me up! He looked so bewildered.

These pelicans were experienced. They were watching a guy gut a fish he caught. In these pictures they are pretty much just hovering in space, then they would look back and softy land on the railing. 

They were really making us laugh.
Walked back to the hotel, had to take a picture of my feet in the ocean of course.
More Man o'War! They were so cool looking! So bright!

My parents love the South Shore Motel. It is one of the only small hotels left in this area. Daytona Beach Shores is only a few miles south of Daytona itself, and is way less crowded. The South Shore is run by an old german couple, Horst and Ellen. It is nice because it is so small so you don't have to wait for the elevator with the other 300 people staying there trying to get down to the beach. It is quiet and clean and has big rooms with kitchenettes. Once when we stayed there were baby sea turtles hatching on the beach! It was incredible! There were scientists out there and you could watch the baby turtles run down to the ocean. 

We left town pretty early so we could have a change to stop in St. Augustine, but we had to eat lunch on the pier first. It is so fun  in the summer to walk all the way down there, then sit by the windows and watch the waves while drinking cold sweet tea and eating a fish sandwich.

See? Fried fish and fries! I can't resist.

Ponce Inlet

I'm not a huge beach person, but it is nice to go every once in a while. My parents were staying at their favorite hotel in Daytona Beach Shores for the week that we were in Florida and invited us to stay with them for a night. This beach is another place I have been a million times and it was fun to show Travis. My dad always brings bonoculars so we can stand on the balcony and watch the ships way out at sea.

As soon as we got there we took a walk down the beach. It was actually really warm, but as soon as you got down by the ocean the wind about knocked you over!

There were jellyfish ALL OVER the beach. I didn't believe Travis when he said these were Portuguese Man o'War but after looking them up once we got back they totally were! Thank goodness we didn't go swimming like we talked about! (The water was FREEZING anyway).

We took a little trip down to the Ponce Inlet lighthouse. It is the tallest lighthouse in Florida. We've been here probably 4 or 5 times. This time my mom admitted that she had never been! Usually on vacation she and my brother would lay on the beach the whole time, and my dad and I would lose interest quickly and go on little field trips. 

It is 203 steps to the top! That my not sound like a lot, but by the time you are about 3/4 of the way to the top, you will wonder how the light house keepers did it every day! There are great exhibits about the lighthouse in the old keeper houses. I like the ones about the families that lived there. They even have a book about the lighthouse pets! 

This is three or four landings from the top. See the checkerboard floor?

Here we are at the top! It is a fun view, even on a weird cloudy windy day.
Us at the top! We had to find a spot where the wind wasn't toooo crazy. look at how pink i am from the wind!
These are fresnel lens that were used in the light house. The are huge and really pretty.

After the lighthouse we went to another Hartsock Vacation classic. We talk about this restaurant all the time and Travis makes fun of me for it. So of course we had to go. It has a deck on the inlet side, not on the ocean, and sometimes you can see dolphins swimming by! So awesome! It is pretty much the perfect beach vacation restaurant. It wasn't as fun in the winter, but the food is still really good.

Trigger fish. Yum. The hushpuppies were so good! And they have a raspberry vinaigrette house salad that is delicious.

There are a bunch of manatee mail boxes on the peninsula. I want a pug mailbox!
After dinner we went tacky souvenir shopping. So many alligator heads!
So classy. I bought some pretty sea urchins and a sand dollar painted like santa.
Then my parents took us to their favorite ice cream place. I got a derby, of course! Too bad they only had chocolate, no butterscotch. We went back to the hotel and called it an early night after that.

I think he was acting like he was going to eat mine so I would quite taking pictures, haha!