Those of you who have been following this blog, already know that its origin was way back in 2016, and was to mark Our New Adventures, as I followed Susie into retirement, and we entered the next chapter of our lives. The first blog post in February of 2016 that was entitled Road Trip (https://rnewadventures.com/2016/02/), detailed the background of our first retired road trip, a trip to Florida. After we returned from that Florida trip, we started discussing the planning for what we called Our Big Adventure, which ultimately took 9 weeks of our life, during which we traveled a grand total of 9,773.0 miles! Every night of that trip (with a couple of exceptions due to internet issues), I detailed that day’s travels, what we saw, what we ate, and what we thought. In reality, road trips are at the very core of this blog!

Over the past five years, there’s been lots of blog posts about road trips. Every winter we have journeyed at some point to Florida and have written about traveling around the state, about our 3 wonderful stays in what we consider to be our Florida home, Indian Rocks Beach, on the Gulf Coast, of trips to Disney World taking advantage of my Disney Retiree Discount, Spring Training Baseball games with our Mets, interesting places we’ve seen, and wonderful meals. This is post number 241 in this blog, and I’d have to say that being on the road has been one of our favorite blog subjects, and probably comprise a majority of our topics. But, alas, our last road trip ended very suddenly, in March of 2020 when we left Florida in a big hurry to get back to our Ocean City home, because of the Covid 19 Pandemic.

Since last March, there have been zero posts about road trips (unless you consider the blog post about Sunday Traditions that included details of our usual Sunday ride around our Ocean City environs a road trip post), but now, thanks to the miracle of our Moderna Covid 19 vaccine injections, there has already been one road trip in 2021. That took place a couple of weeks ago when we left the State of New Jersey for the first time since March 14, 2020 and joined I-95 again for the first time since last March, so we could visit our North Carolina family, hug our Grandkids and our son Bill and daughter-in-law Lori, and get back to normal! As I said at the end of that blog, Thank you Moderna!

TIME FOR A REAL ROAD TRIP

So this post is just an advisory of what’s in our immediate future. On Friday, April 16th, we will once again head down the Atlantic City Expressway towards I-95 Southbound. Our first destination later that day will once again be our son Bill’s house in Wake Forest, North Carolina. You see, our two Granddaughters happen to have both been born in April – albeit 5 years and 15 days apart! Our 7 year old Layla came into this world on April 2nd, 2013, and her sister Annabelle joined the family on April 17th, 2019. This Saturday, they are going to have a joint birthday party for our two Granddaughters, and we plan to be there! Layla’s birthday happened to coincide with Easter this year, but this will be the first real birthday we get to spend with Annabelle, and Susie and I are super excited about that!

THE BIRTHDAY GIRLS – 7 AND 2 YEARS EARLIER!

Okay, so that’s part one. On Sunday, April 18th, we once again head south on Interstate 95 with Sunday’s stop at a Hampton Inn in Richmond Hill, Georgia. No, we’re not stopping there because it’s called the same as a village in Queens. There is a much more important reason…there’s a Fuddruckers in a truck stop just down the road from the hotel! So, are we driving all the way to Georgia for a hamburger we haven’t gotten since the Fuddruckers on Long Island closed many years ago?

Nope, Monday morning we are up and again headed south on I-95, and will keep going till we get to the city of St. Petersburg, in the Sunshine State, Florida! Covid cheated us out of what has become our usual summer preview, by traveling to Florida in February and March, and now fully inoculated, we need to make a brief guest appearance there to keep our record up to snuff….that, and we want to see Our Boys, son Kenny and his husband Chris who now live in Downtown St. Petersburg! We want to see their new apartment IRL, we want to see where they live, and mostly we want to be able to hug these guys! It’s only a brief 3 days stay in St. Petersburg, but it’s a start!

On Thursday the 22nd, we will head back to where it all started for us in Indian Rocks Beach, the Holiday Inn! This is where we first stayed for a couple of days back in 2018, till we met our bartender friend Lindsey, and decided to stay longer. After 4 days at the Holiday Inn, we fell in love with the town, and we are looking forward to a brief (one night) stop with the boys to say hello to our Florida home! It’s not the month we stayed in IRB last year, but at least we again get to keep our streak going, with hope for 2022!

On Friday morning, we say goodbye to Kenny and Chris, and head back to I-95 and another favorite “trip to Florida” stop, Darien, Georgia! We’ll spend the night at the Hampton Inn in town for one reason and one reason only! So we can have dinner at B&J’s Steak and Seafood! The home of the best fried shrimp we’ve ever had. It’s a Friday, so we may have a long wait, but we missed our shrimp on the way home in 2020, and we want it now!

So that’s what we will be doing the next couple of weeks, and who knows..there may even be a trip to New York for Doctors’ appointments and to see our daughter Krissi and son-in-law Mike’s new condo in New Rochelle! Watch out world…Susie and I are free, and we have mileage to put on the Honda before the lease is up!!!

To be continued….Thank you Moderna!