We recently were in Georgia visiting my parents, and on the way home, we stopped at the Florida Welcome Center on I-95. If you've ever stopped at this one, you'll know it's a full-on Welcome Center, complete with plenty of parking, restrooms, free juice, and racks and racks full of travel brochures and information. And helpful staff!
While we were on our Middle States trip, we stopped at the Welcome / Visitor Centers for several of the states we traveled through, but few compared to those in Florida. We didn't expect much from those located on state roads or scenic byways, but we thought that those on the interstates might be comparable. Most were not staffed and only had a handful of visitor materials available.
Two memorable ones were in Tennessee on I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville, and in Georgia off I-185 in Columbus. We've stopped at the one in Georgia several times over the years and it has been consistently well-tended. What we liked especially about the one in Tennessee is that we expected it to just be a rest area as it was in the middle of the state, but it was actually a Tennessee Welcome Center (#8) complete with brochures and information for the whole state. It was a good place to pick up information about Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge where we were headed, especially as I hadn't done much research about what to do there before we were arriving.
So the Florida Welcome Center has been the main source of information for framing our Edges of Florida trip! Because we have framed what we want to do, we were able to focus on what brochures and books and maps we wanted for more detailed planning. So now we have a stack of things to look through and use for our smash book once we travel!
When we were in the early stages of our Middle States trip planning, some new friends from Michigan that we met on a cruise were so kind as to pick up information about the Mackinaw area from a Michigan Welcome Center which they mailed to us! Which reminds me that we did stop at a cute Michigan welcome/visitor center when we entered that state.
For this trip, we won't be leaving the state, but we'll look for local visitor information centers to check out. Which reminds me I need to find their online presences to follow on social media so we can know about things happening in the areas we'll be. We do that when we spend time at St. George Island as the Franklin County tourism board and Apalachicola chamber of commerce are great resources for that area.
Less than six months until we head out!
~ Cindy D.
