Over MLK weekend, I was able to embark on a trip to Florida to get a chance to visit wolves and some big cats. Now when I say big cats I’m not talking about some overweight house cat, I am talking about a 200 pound Mountain Lion and Florida panthers. After meeting up with the group that I was traveling with, we set off on our quest.

Usually car rides are my absolute least favorite part of the trip, but after this experience I think I will start rethinking car trips. In the past, when I thought of a car ride, what popped into my mind was hours of sitting in a car, reading a book (if I was lucky enough to manage without the usual bought of car sickness), making aimless conversation, and blankly staring out the window watching the world pass by hoping for a change in scenery. What I hadn’t known yet was that the scenery was in fact quite more interesting than what I had always believed.  My new look on car rides can be accredited  to my leader who was driving the car. On this trip she insisted that we look out the window and if we missed something she would surely point it out whether it be a funny billboard or an interesting looking house. Slowly, I too began to notice the quirkiness of the little towns we drove through from what looked like a haunted house to a lawn filled with those pink flamingos that you would expect to find in your Grandma’s yard.

Eventually we stumbled upon a town in Alabama named Dothan. Honestly, I didn’t expect much from this town except for a chance to stop and use the bathroom, but little did I know what I would soon find. The car was tranquil with nothing more than the sound of Kansas’ ‘Carry On My Wayward Sun’ playing in the background until suddenly my leader’s daughter shouted, “IT’S A PEANUT STATUE!”. With a sharp turn of the wheel into a near by parking lot, my leader stopped the car utterly shocked. After a quick explanation of what she had seen, the whole car had quickly agreed that peanut statues are not something that you can just drive past without stopping and taking a sufficient number of pictures.

Now, our eyes were peeled for the sight of any peanut statue we could find in the town of Dothan and we were needless to say ecstatic to find two more.

This car ride was probably the best car ride I had ever been on due to being surrounded by adventurous people and finding a new adventure where I never thought one could be found. Who new that being “stuck” in a car was an  adventure in itself? I’m glad to be able to say that I’ve been able to find one more Alesia that the Earth has to offer : car rides.

With Love,

-L

 

Next week: Big Cats & Wolves along with a trip to the caves