A few months ago Diane and I were sitting around and decided we wanted to take a trip to New Orleans. Neither one of us had ever been there.
When looking into plane tickets and hotels when we decided to drive instead of paying $800 to fly. I love to drive anyways, so I pushed this way of travel whenever possible. This also allowed us to do a couple things. My Mom has a friend in Chipley, Florida, so we decided to see if she wanted to ride down with us and stay with her friend for a few days and then we could pick her up on the way back. She was very excited and so it was, she was coming with us.
We could also stop at Orange Beach, Alabama, and see a friend and former teacher of mine, Gej Jones, and his wife, Sally. Gej and I are having a Photography Gallery show together June 8th at the REO Art Alley in Lansing MI.
So day 1 we took off at 6am Tuesday February 26th. It’s about a 14-hour drive from East Lansing to Chipley, FL. The drive was uneventful; we took turns driving and made pretty good time. The last 2 hours of the drive was the worst. You have to drive a 4 lane state highway, which has about 200 lights over 140 miles. So it’s a lot of stop and go. When we finally arrived in Chipley we spent about a half hour talking to my Mom’s friend Elaine before Diane and I crashed for the night.
The next morning Diane and I took off about 8am, it’s a 2.5-hour drive if you go straight to Gej and Sally’s place, but we decided to take the more scenic ride along the coast so it took us about 4 hours.
When we arrived in Alabama we pulled into their place, took our bags in and spent some time talking with Gej and Sally. After about an hour they wanted to take us to lunch at one of their favorite places with the fancy name of EAT. When you walk in, there are about 10 tables. Its kind of a cafeteria-style service. You walk along the counter and tell them what you want. They are mainly a caterer for their main business and supplement their income with the (Open for Lunch Only) restaurant. Each day they have a different menu. On this day it was Cajun, which is right up my alley! We had a great meal, a little Gumbo, Catfish, Jambalaya and Red Beans and Rice. After that we headed back to their place to regroup.
A couple hours later we went to Fort Morgan to do some shooting. Gej had been there many times, and he wanted to take me there to take some photos, and I’m glad he did. The place was amazing, I didn’t catch much information about the history of the place, I was too busy shooting to ask. We spent about 2 hours going around shooting, while Diane and Sally talked the whole time about god knows what, they seemed like they had been friends for years.
When we returned from Fort Morgan, Gej and I edited our photos for a couple hours.
Then it was dinnertime. They had bought a couple pounds of shrimp, so we sat around and peeled and ate them.
Then we sat up for several hours talking and solving all the worlds’ problems! We had a wonderful time with them, it was so nice for Diane to meet Gej and for both of us to get to know Sally; they are two of the nicest people you could spend time with.
The next morning we were off to New Orleans…
