Prologue: Northeast Road Trip 2026

Prologue.  That’s what I’m calling the first two days of our Northeast Road Trip, because they are not really about going to the northeast.  Instead, they are about joining DH’s family in Tennessee for the funeral of his beloved sister.  It’s not how we imagined starting this trip, but we cannot imagine being anywhere else now that his sister passed away.  If you’ve been following our planning blog entries, you’ll know we had rearranged the end of our trip so we could get by to see her.  But as her health turned for the worse, we made a quick run to Tennessee last week to be with her and her family.  And as the funeral was scheduled for the day before we were originally going to start the trip, we just left early so we could attend the funeral before going forward with our plans.

That said, we’re still treating the first two days as part of the trip, meaning we’re following our usual road trip practices of staying off the interstates, dining at places we can’t eat at home, enjoying the journey as much as each day’s destination.  I’ll be making another smash book for this trip, and of course there will be pictures!

So let’s get to it!  Our first day had a longer-than-usual drive as we wanted to make it to the DeSoto StatePark Lodge near Fort Payne, Alabama.  We had stayed at the lodge in 2017 and enjoyed the rustic nature of this place constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps beginning in 1934. 

We drove up US27 for much of the way before cutting over to get to the state park.  Along the way we stopped a few times; our rest stop of choice is Publix as they generally have clean restrooms and are air conditioned.  We can also do a little shopping which is what I did at one of our two Publix stops in Georgia where BOGO means buy one at half price.  They had a few things I had wanted to get for the trip, so we took care of that while we were already stopped.

Because we had run this same route just last week, we had figured out the good stops for gas, too.  There’s a Marathon gas station in Bremen that is just the right spot for gassing up to get to Tennessee.  I had been a member of the Marathon Rewards club a while ago, so I signed in again so I can take advantage of some savings.  Which works out good because my next fill up at a Marathon station will get us 25-cents per gallon off.  For this trip, I did our gas budget at $3.75 per gallon and 30 MPG.  Today’s gas was $3.67 per gallon and we were getting about 32 MPG.

The DeSoto State Park is in central time zone, so we arrived before 4 PM.  We were assigned a lodge room that is closer to the parking lot than when we were here last week which turned out to be a really good thing.  There are bears that are active in the area, so that meant we had to make sure to get any and all food out of the car.  In hindsight, if I had thought of that, we probably would not have stayed here because we have brought quite a stash of car snacks and picnic food.  What I thought was going to be an easy unload of two small suitcases, a few electronics, and the toiletries bag became about half the car’s cargo!  And it was all so perfectly tetrised in.  At least I had taken a picture earlier so I can remember how to put it back!

Once we were settled in the room, we went out for a walk.  It’s been so dry in this area that the waterfall nearest to the lodge is dried up.  We walked towards another waterfall for a bit but decided we didn’t want to risk getting ticks or get more sweaty than we already were.  The humidity was pretty bad.  We did find where they have a native plant preservation project going on and a nice path that would be good on a cooler day.

When we were here last week, the Mountain Inn Restaurant wasn’t open for dinner because they are only open on the weekends.  So this time we were able to enjoy a delicious meal.  DH got the cat fish fillets and I had the grilled porkchops.  They took good care in the kitchen to make sure there wasn’t cross-contamination of my food, too.  (If you follow this blog for future entries, I’ll probably mention gluten-free dining many times.)  Also, the restaurant has a beautiful fireplace!

After dinner, DH sat on the porch until the bugs got too bad.  We would recommend staying here maybe in the early spring or late fall rather than August!

So that’s the first day.  Thanks for reading my narration and ramblings about it.

~ Cindy D.