Now that the house is packed up - everything was either given away or put into storage - we're on the road. (In case you missed the news, see the last two posts

here

and

here

.) A friend gifted us with one night in hotel, so we could recover from all that packing and moving - and we collapsed!

Then, before we left town, we took care of final things like refilling prescriptions and arranging for mail. Oh, that was another question someone asked as we began packing up and I forgot to answer in my last post. For almost a decade, our mail delivery has come to a mailbox, rather than to our home. Because we receive packages on occasion, we needed a mailbox with a street address, and The UPS Store provides just that. But they also provide so much more.

They offer mail forwarding services as part of our box rental. Even though we're on the road, our mailing address remains the same. Whenever we want or need our physical mail, we call them and arrange for them to ship it to us wherever we happen to be.

Our first stop was my Mom's and sister's house for a short visit. This stop gave us time to reassess our car packing by how easy it was to load and unload what we needed quickly. We've purged a few things and picked up some other things that we forgot before we left home.

This first leg provided a wonderful surprise and taught me a great lesson.

For my entire life, we've traveled the same roads from Alabama to Georgia to visit grandparents, and then each other as we grew up and lived in one or the other state. This time, when we left Rome, Georgia, Waze took us a different way, and I let her because I was honestly too exhausted to figure out where she was taking us. (Our Waze is named Jane, and Tim talks to her just like he talks to me. I'm glad she doesn't talk back to him like Siri seems to do, or I'd never have any peace and quiet.)

This trip, Jane took us across a portion of Weiss Lake in Centre, Alabama, that I'd never seen before. Totally surprised me to see how beautiful that side of the lake was compared to where we normally traveled, and then we discovered something else so fun, I quickly turned around and stopped to take pictures.

The Bluegill has always been my favorite fish to catch and to eat. Good thing my car was packed or I might have wanted to take this beauty home with me! Aren't the colors stunning?

My dad loved catching large-mouth bass more than anything! He would have loved this monster!

My grandad loved catching crappie (that he pronounced like crappy and the rest of us pronounced like croppy). 

I was delighted by the fish and loved learning that they sit in front of Weiss Lake Lodge, so I'm sure there's a stay there somewhere in my distant future!

The lesson learned on this leg of the journey - take the road less traveled. You may find something delightful!