Overview
Our first trip of the year took us to south to get out of the late winter weather and to explore and experience some of what the south has to offer in early March. On this trip we made stops and visited in the following towns and cities over the course of three weeks. As always when we head south this time of year, we try and meet up with friends and family, catch some spring baseball, and celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. Here is an overview of the route we took from our home in Virginia to Florida and back.
- Stuart, Virginia
- Anderson, South Carolina
- Greenville, South Carolina
- Madison, Georgia
- Americus, Georgia
- Cedar Key, Florida
- St Cloud, Florida
- Jupiter, Florida
- Charleston, South Carolina
- Blacksburg, Virginia
Round Hill to Stuart, Virginia
My wife Nancy and I try and stay off the interstates when we travel. As we traveled to Stuart Virginia (near the VA/NC border) we took Route 340 until we had to veer over to Interstate 81 for a short time before heading to Stuart. The weather was great, and this part of the country is always very scenic.
Stuart, Virginia
Our first stop of the trip was to visit Steve and Judy, friends we have known for many years. They were wonderful hosts, even cooking us dinner!
Stuart to Anderson, South Carolina
As we leave Stuart, we follow a back-country route through Mount Airy and Wilkesboro North Carolina. This route allows us to stay clear of the interstates until we are fairly close to our next destination in Anderson, South Carolina. The weather continues to hold, and the drive is very scenic. As we get further south, we start to see the beginnings of spring and the weather warms to the low 70’s. We are headed to Anderson next to catch up for a bit with our very long-time friends Will and Barbara.
Anderson and Greenville, South Carolina
For our first night, we enjoy a wonderful meal Barbara made and spent time catching up a bit.
The next day we head up to Greenville (about 30 minutes from Anderson) for the afternoon to explore the beautiful town which is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Near main street is the scenic Falls Park on the Reedy which is surrounded by restaurants, art and even an outdoor theater. We walk around exploring the area and then find a nice outdoor table overlooking the falls to grab a bite before finishing our exploration of the area. This area has a lot to offer including minor league baseball and hockey teams. It turns out to be a great area to hang out for several hours.
Anderson, South Carolina
For our second evening we head over the downtown section of Anderson for dinner.
Madison, Georgia
After our short visit, we are off to our next stop: Americus, Georgia. Again. we take the off-the-beaten path as we head towards Americus. As lunch time approaches, we arrive at Madison, Georgia to look for a place to eat. We have been driving for a bit so before eating, we walk around the town square and area that had been voted by Budget Travel as one of the most picturesque towns. Madison has a population of about 4,500 and has approximately 100 antebellum homes that have been carefully restored. We see a few BnB’s near main street and make a note to come back and explore this area a little better on a future trip.
Amici Restaurant
Last year when we were in Milledgeville, Georgia, we encountered one of the small regional collections of restaurant/brew pubs called Amici. We really liked the one last year and found this Amici to also have great food and a welcoming atmosphere. After our meal, it was time to hit the road and get to Americus.
Americus, Georgia
Nancy and I like to find old historic hotels and check them out in our travels. Several years ago, just as the world was re-opening from Covid lockdowns, we found the Windsor Hotel. Built-in 1892, the Windsor is a five-story Victorian masterpiece hotel architecturally designed with a tower, balconies, and a three-story open atrium lobby. It occupies nearly an entire city block and was the site of numerous balls and celebrations over the years. The hotel closed its doors in 1972 after almost 80 years in operation. Since then, the hotel has undergone extensive renovations in 1991, 2010, and most recently in 2019.
The Station
The last time we were in Americus, very few restaurants had re-opened. Nancy researched restaurants and on Tuesdays, not all are open. Tonight, we chose The Station, just down the street from The Windsor, and it did not disappoint. The atmosphere was “pub”, but the food was not your typical “pub-fare”. In the picture below you will see the really fantastic fried cheese grits we had as an appetizer.
Americus to Cedar Key, Florida
In the morning, we head south on Route 19 which we’ve learned is a great way to head down south into Florida. We found the traffic on this 4-lane highway to be very light both this year and last time through. We highly recommend this route over taking the busy interstates south from here. It’s a little bit slower than the interstate as the speed limit is usually 55 and you do pass through a few small towns, but the scenery is great and asl ready mentioned, there is very little traffic.
Cedar Key, Florida
We love finding those hidden gems in Florida that are still “old school Florida”. Cedar Key is a bit off-the-beaten path (about 30 minutes from the “main road”) and is a small community without high rise condos. There are several simple restaurants. a few small hotels, a few condos (2-story) and few souvenir shops. You can walk to everything in Cedar Key although some folks rent golf-carts to get around. Cedar Key took a devastating hit in August 2023 from Hurricane Idalia and while most businesses have rebuilt and recovered, there are still some places under reconstruction.
Cedar Key: Harbour Master Suites
We stayed at Harbour Master Suites, a small hotel with about a dozen rooms located on the water. We chose “The Loft”, a huge second-story room complete with a full-sized refrigerator and kitchenette. Just outside of our room we have great view of the gulf coast and a little table where we could sit outside and enjoy the scenery.
Steamers Clam Bar & Grill
We head over to Steamers Clam Bar & Grill for happy hour and dinner. It was only about 200 ft from our room. We shared a seafood dinner that was a combination of Mahi-Mahi and Shrimp – and it completely exceeded our expectations. We met a couple that had been in Cedar key for 3 months over the winter and had a great evening of conversation with them. We learn there is a fairly large percentage of people in Cedar Key that do monthly condo rentals during the winter.
Wildlife Preserve & Community Cemetery
I did a significant amount of walking in Cedar Key without Nancy, since she’s nurturing a foot injury. As part of my adventuring through the various homes and neighborhoods, I found the great little Cemetery Point Nature Park. It has a boardwalk to the water and has a route back though the community cemetery which has been in operation since the founding of the town. We like to venture into old cemeteries as we travel – you never know what you might find, and this cemetery was no exception.
Hanging Out by the Water
We spend our full day in Cedar Key just unwinding from life. We sat at the table outside our room for hours just watching the birds on the nearby pier as they fly back and forth and occasionally fight a little bit for roosting space. We checked out a few of the other food and beverage establishments such as Tony’s Chowder House (3-time world winner of the best clam chowder), Big Deck Raw Bar and The Tipsy Cow.
St Cloud, FL and Carl’s New Neighborhood
In the morning, we leave Cedar Key and head to St Cloud Florida where we help our son Carl setup his new townhouse. To my delight, the neighborhood had a number of great walking areas where I could get my morning hike in while observing wildlife. There weren’t a lot of alligators, but I did see a couple of small ones submerged in the lake.
Spring Baseball
After a few days of helping Carl shop for furniture & supplies to get his new house in order, it was time for us to head out to watch some spring baseball. It was a two-hour drive south to Jupiter where we saw the Washington Nationals play the Saint Louis Cardinals for one game and play the Miami Marlins on another. We love the up-close and personal experience of spring baseball where we had tickets right behind the third base dugout.
Disney Springs
We have another free day, and our son Carl suggests we check out Disney Springs, about 20 minutes from his new townhouse. Disney Springs is basically a large collection of 69+ restaurants, 95 shopping venues and 25 attractions/shows/events sprinkled about the area. Unlike most of the Disney or Univeral attractions, there isn’t an admission charge or a parking fee. We are there on a Tuesday afternoon and we find the area uncrowded. As a special bonus, many of the restaurants are running mid-week food and drink specials all afternoon long. We walk around to take if all in. We stop for a superb snack at Raglan Road Irish Pub and then head over the House of Blues where we find a great little table outside – by ourselves. We take in the lake view, people watch as folks stroll by and just relax for a bit while enjoying more delicious snacks. We watch as several people rent vintage “amphicars” (an amphibious vehicle that can drive on land and float on water) and ride around the surrounding waters.
This is a highly recommended venue! Now that we know about this place and the mid-day/mid-week specials not far from Carl’s new house, we will be back on a future trip in this area.
Crabby Bill’s, St Cloud
For dinner on our last night with our son, we head over Crabby Bill’s Seafood Restaurant on the shore of the fairly large Lake Tohopekaliga. We had tried to go here on the weekend when we first got to St Cloud, but it was so crowded we couldn’t get a parking spot. It was nice to get away from the actual town and its many chain restaurants to enjoy great food and views.
Driving from Florida to Charleston, South Carolina
After almost a week at Carl’s, it’s time to begin our journey back north to home. Our next stop is Charleston, South Carolina – a full 6-hour drive that is a little longer than we generally like – and it is all heavy traffic interstate driving. Nancy despises driving over tall bridges so dutiful, loving husband Harrison took the first driving shift over the Jacksonville bridge. The afternoon passes quickly, and we arrive late in the afternoon at our hotel in Charleston safe and sound.
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston was the first settlement in South Carolina beginning in 1670. It is filled with history and stuffed full of large historic homes, restaurants, shopping, museums, parks and other points of interest. It was once the fourth largest and wealthiest city in the young United States. We are in town for 5 nights and 4 full days to experience much of what it has to offer including the bonus of being there for the Saint Patrick’s Day weekend celebrations. We stay in the historic downtown area at Homewood Suites, Charleston Historic District. Across the water from this area is Patriot’s Point where the Aircraft Carrier Yorktown is anchored along with other historic naval vessels. Out in the middle of the harbor is the historical Fort Sumpter where the American Civil War began.
We spend many hours walking the streets exploring much many of the neighborhoods. This is a very SAFE city to walk around in! The city also offers a free Downtown Area SHuttle (DASH) with 3 different routes. It runs from 6:30am – 10:00pm during the week and from 9:00am to about 8:00pm on the weekends, running about every 20 minutes.
Big John’s Tavern & Mac’s Place
Our main attraction on our first day is to take the water shuttle over to For Sumpter. We have about 3 hours to wait for the ferry, so we stop at Big John’s Tavern for lunch and have a snack of Pigs on a Clothesline. They hang bacon over a bed of vegetables and use a blow torch to heat it up and drip the bacon flavor onto the vegetables. The food was great, but we found this to be one of the more expensive stops we made in Charleston. We move on just a block or two away and split another snack (fried mac-n-cheese bites) at Mac’s Place. We really liked this place and end up returning another day.
Fort Sumpter
Fort Sumpter was the site where the Confederates opened up the American Civil War. During the course of the war, it was severely damaged during many battles and left in ruins. After the war it was partially reconstructed and has been operated by the National Park system since the middle of the 20th century. We always wanted to visit this site and we picked a great day weather-wise to take to ferry over. As a bonus with this trip, we get to view Charleston and the harbor from the water.
Ghost Tour by Horse Drawn Carriage
Nancy can’t resist a horse drawn ghost tour so we sign up with Old South Carriage Company and get a fairly entertaining adventure riding slowly around the downtown listening to historical events that have a supernatural twist to them. Our driver is Milo and our horse is Otis – who remembers those two names as the main animal characters of “the Adventures of Milo and Otis” book & movie?
Saint Patrick’s Day Parade
On Saturday morning (day two) we head down to King Street to watch the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It is only March 16th, but they are kicking off the weekend of celebration with the parade. The were several bag pipe bands and a number of groups of kids from various Irish dance schools performing in the parade. From all appearances, it seems if you are willing to dress up and/or decorate a vehicle, you can be part of the parade. The parade lasts for over an hour, and we decide to head over afterward to the nearby the Charleston Museum before heading downtown for some of the day’s festivities.
Charleston Museum
We spent about 2 hours touring the Charleston Museum and reading about the history of the area. One of the things we learn in great detail was how the wealth of this area was built on rice cultivation, a highly prized item in Europe. Although rice is no longer grown in this area, many of the large estates still exist and outlines of the old rice fields can still be seen. In front of the museum is a full model of the Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship. The original Hunley is located in a different area of Charleston and unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to go and see it on this trip.
Joseph Manigault House
In the late 1700’s there were about 800,000 protestant Calvinists in France that came under persecution by Louis XIV when he outlawed Calvinism. This led to a number of French relocating to Charleston and today, is why there is a French Quarter in Charleston. Joseph Manigault who had migrated as a part of this movement, became one of the richest men in the area. He built this home in 1803. It was designed by his brother Gabriel. Their father, Peter, was the wealthiest man in the British North American colonies at the time of his death in 1773. The house is well known nationally as one of the best-preserved examples of the Adams style of architecture, a very popular style in this time period in America. It is located across the street from the Charleston Museum and was included as a part of our combo ticket. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, and we learned a wealth of information about the house and Charleston history as we moved through the house. It’s well worth stopping at when you are in the area.
Tommy Condon’s
Charleston loves to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day/Weekend! And what’s Saint Patrick’s Day without hanging out for a bit in an Irish pub? We headed about a mile toward the waterfront district to Tommy Condon’s Irish Pub and Seafood Restaurant and manage to be the last people admitted in this area for a while. There is live music and tons of people decked out for the celebration. The line to get in accumulates and people patiently wait to join the fun inside. As always, we meet and talk with a number of people during the course of the afternoon. A really fun day! And by the way, their Irish Potato Chowder is incredible!
The Actual St. Patrick’s Day
Today is March 17th, the actual St Patrick’s Day. We are expecting the same party atmosphere as yesterday, but in fact, it is more mellow.
Lo and behold, through the power of social media, Nancy learns that one of her sorority sisters is also visiting Charleston. We arrange to meet Roxanne and her husband for lunch at John King’s Grill and Dueling Piano Bar. It was a hoot to catch up after (cough) 40+ years since college. After posting about our mini-reunion on social media, we learn in fact there was a 3rd sister in town too – we just didn’t know.
We then do our own “pub crawl”, having small bites and beers at places such as Uptown Social (great pizza), Charleston Beer Works (probably our favorite place overall) and Blind Tiger Pub.
The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
On our final full day, we head back downtown to pick up a couple other museums we hadn’t been to. The concentration of museums in this area is called the museum mile where you will find 6 museums, 5 nationally renowned historic houses, 4 scenic parks, a Revolutionary War powder magazine, and an array of historic houses of worship and public buildings such as the Market and City Hall. On our ghost tour we heard stories of the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon where revolutionary prisoners were imprisoned in cramped, dark and wet conditions in part of the basement. Built in 1771, the upper floor has served as a commercial exchange, custom house, post office, city hall, military headquarters and is now a museum. The building also served as the most common destination in Charleston for public slave auctions. This building is also the building where George Washington once visited as president and where the as yet unratified Constitution was read to the people of Charleston. The building is one of only four remaining structures in the US where the nation’s founding document was originally ratified. We had to go down into the bowels of the basement to see the dungeon area.
The Old Slave Mart Museum
As a part of our combo ticket, we also visited the Old Slave Mart Museum which is housed in one of the old slave auction areas. It a small museum and doesn’t take a lot of time to tour, but it was worth a stopover. It is the United State’s first museum on the history of slavery and was established in 1958. The Old Stave Mart came to be after a city ordinance banned slave auctions at the Old Exchange and operated for seven years. The grounds includes a 4-story dormitory where the newly arrived enslaved people where first housed while being “prepped” for sale.
Visit Casey and Stephen
It’s time to head home and on our way back we stop off in Blacksburg to visit one of our other boys, Stephen, and his wife Casey!
Blacksburg, Virginia to Round Hill, Virginia
After weeks of warm weather in the deep south, we start to see spring again as we head north through the incredibly beautiful Shenandoah Valley on our way back to Round Hill. There were high gusting winds blowing over trees, knocking over power-lines and spreading fires – such that we had to turn around 3 times due to road closures. We finally gave up the back-way home and hopped on Interstate 81 to get home.
Summary
Although we have traveled south down to Florida many times, now that we are retired, we have more time to explore in detail areas we haven’t been to before. In particular, on this trip we added a few towns to our list of places we would go back to again including Cedar Key Florida, Disney Springs (during the Week), Madison Georgia, Greenville South Carolina and Charleston.
Next Up
We are headed out in April 2024 to Ohio for the total eclipse of the sun!
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