Storms On The Journey - Seeking Southern Charm, Fairhope!

 

Seeking Southern Charm: Landing in Fairhope (Barely)

I made it to Fairhope, Alabama! Barely.

I owe y'all so many stories. Now that I'm settled here for a bit — and Bertha, that tropical storm with a name far scarier than her actual manners, is hanging around like the skeeters hang around the bay — I'm finally ready to take you on some of the wild, wonderful, occasionally white-knuckled journeys that got me from Beaufort to Savannah to Live Oak, Florida, and now here, to sweet Fairhope.

First things first: I'm writing this from Provisions — a coffee-wine-shop-little-bit-of-everything spot that I sat inside of for a full ten minutes before I typed the word and realized what it actually meant. Provisions. Dang. I need to go easier on the blonde highlights.

(If you want to see it all unfold in real time, I'm on Instagram at @BirdieJaneLane — the photos tell half the story.)

The Parts I Don't Always Show You

I've mostly been sharing the best parts of this trip. The peach-ripe, golden-hour parts. But a solo road trip isn't all smooth sailing, and I don't want anyone thinking otherwise.

Breakfast at Provisions

There have been tears. There was a full freakout — alone, driving into a new state, when my phone lost signal right as I needed to exit and couldn't for the life of me remember which one. There have been splinters. And there was the time in Savannah I drove the wrong way down a one-way street with a police car coming straight at me — and the officers just... waited. Patiently. Backed up so I could correct myself, then drove on like it was nothing.

Thank you, boys in blue. I owe you one.

The Pattern I Keep Repeating

Here's something I've noticed about myself on this trip: every time I land somewhere new, my first instinct is that I don't like it. Charleston ruined me for life in the very best way, and I think some part of me keeps measuring every new place against it and finding it wanting — at first.

Then I explore, and everything shifts.

My advice, if you're the directionally challenged sort like me: be an early riser. Walk the town before anything opens. There's something about seeing a place empty and quiet that gives you its real shape — how the streets actually connect, where the shortcuts hide — so that when it wakes up and gets busy, you already know your way around.

I didn't do that in Savannah, and I paid for it. I got good and lost downtown before I'd even reached my Airbnb. Travel days do that to you — the unpacking, the trying to remember which bag has your phone charger, the sheer overwhelm of starting over in a new place. It piles up.

About Those Airbnbs

I wish I could tell you they'd all been wonderful. The truth is they've gotten a little rougher as the trip's gone on — though I think that's partly because Harrisonburg, Mount Pleasant, and Beaufort spoiled me rotten. Beaufort, especially, had the loveliest screened-in porch I've ever sat on — the kind that makes you understand why people fall in love with a place.

I picked this Fairhope rental because it promised a screened front porch and a cute little back porch. What I got was a screened porch full of cobwebs and stained furniture, at a higher price than my gorgeous Beaufort spot. (update: I contacted the host's about the spider webs - they came right out the next morning and it is now sparkling and lovely! I learned a lesson - it's okay to tell your host about an issue! I loathe being a complainer - except when I write, obviously! And had that issue never happened, I would have never met Sandy - who invited me to coffee and then to lunch and then to her home where I met her wonderful husband Tom and Dash, their four legged family member! Story to come on that!)

But that's the deal, isn't it? The journey isn't all sunshine and roses. It's also tropical storms, bugs, wrong turns, and disappointing porches — and rising to meet all of it anyway. My goal from here on: less private freakout, more cool, calm, and collected. 

What Lila Taught Me, Without Even Trying

I'm currently reading a memoir by a local Fairhope writer — What Would Mamma Do — by a woman I met at Pages & Palette, the bookstore here in town. She's ninety-four years old. Her name is Lila Pennington Ryals, and within minutes of meeting me, she was insisting I put her address in my phone so I could come visit her at her cottage.

Ninety-four, and sharper than I am most days.

I started her book yesterday, and it recalibrated something in me fast. Whatever porch I'm complaining about, whatever wrong turn I made — it's nothing next to what she's lived through. Nothing compared to what the generations before all of us survived.

Sometimes it feels like we're living in doomed times. But this trip keeps reminding me: our country has weathered tremendous upheaval before, and we came through it. We always do.

It's not supposed to be an easy life. It's supposed to be a good one. And good doesn't mean easy — it means doing what you can to flourish when the weather's fair and the times are kind, and hunkering down, steady, when they're not — trusting that this too will pass.

I'll be sharing more soon, including the story of driving through Storm Bertha to reach Lila's cottage. It's a good one.

Until then —

Roll Tide!

— Birdie

Seeking Southern Charm: Do It Anyway!

Here's what I've learned so far on this book tour, this life tour, whatever we're calling it these days: if you think you shouldn't do something, do it anyway.

I learned this lesson again yesterday, in Beaufort, South Carolina, wearing the wrong swimsuit. Or rather, wearing no swimsuit at all, which turned out to be the whole point of the story.

They were calling for rain most of the day. Not a maybe-rain, a definitely-rain, the kind of forecast that gives a woman permission to stay in and call it wisdom. I wanted to go to Hunting Island State Park. I hesitated, because of the rain, because forecasts feel like promises even when they're just guesses in a uniform.

And then, because I am trying to be a person who goes anyway, I went.

It wasn't raining.

I should back up, because there was a small automotive subplot happening underneath all of this. My rear window — the one in my trusty old Lexus, the one that has carried me through more of this trip than I like to admit — had stopped working. Again. It had done this before I left home, and I'd had it fixed, both the rear window and the front, thank you very much, paid good money, drove away feeling very responsible. And then somewhere along this southern road it quit on me a second time. I told myself it was the rainstorms. Cars, like people, apparently hold onto old wounds and reopen them when the weather turns.

Anyway. I can already tell this story is going to run long. It's going to be worth it, I promise!

I got up early (well, as we’ve established, early is my natural rhythm) and looked at the brochures again for Hunting Island State Park — which, if you don't know, and I didn't know, is a genuinely beautiful beach, unspoiled by condos or restaurants elbowing each other for the ocean view. There are turtle nests tucked into that sand, and volunteers who love them the way you'd love something you'd sworn to protect, checking on them so gently, so faithfully, that no harm comes to those turtles on their watch. There is something about a place that has resisted being paved and franchised that makes you stand a little straighter.

I decided to go despite the forecast, and because it wasn't a sunny day, I didn't wear a swimsuit. Note this, dear reader, and do not make my mistake: always wear your swimsuit to the beach. Always. Even under the clouds. Especially under the clouds.

The drive out at 7 a.m. was stress-free — no traffic, just me and the road and the particular quiet of a world that hasn't fully woken up yet. I am so glad I went. Yes, it was overcast, but it was mesmerizing watching the sky do its slow, moody work, with storm clouds gathering off in the distance, rain falling on a horizon that was no where near me (or the turtles). 

There was nothing on the beach. Just a few people walking, way down by parking lot 8, and the turtle volunteers doing their quiet rounds. That was it. That was the whole congregation.

And I wished that I'd worn my swimsuit. It was the perfect morning for wave jumping, for just wading in and letting the ocean do what it does. There was no one there to laugh at my mismatched swimsuit, or at the fact that my soft belly is the color of grocery store white eggs while my arms and legs have gone the deep brown of eggs from the farmers market. It would have just been me and the Atlantic, having it out, no audience required.

I didn't get in the water. But I got the lesson anyway, delivered the way the best lessons always are — a little late, a little damp around the edges, and completely worth the drive.

And that, dear reader, was only the morning.

I left the beach craving a burger — a real one, red meat, no apologies — and set my sights on Biddy's, which I had seen was open at nine. What I had not seen was the fine print: nine, on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Not one of those days was today. Boo. I stood there a little bereft, the way you can only be bereft over a burger you never actually had. But it had already been a glorious morning, and we were only a few hours into it, so I let it go and kept driving.

Which is how I ended up in a Verizon store.

My phone had been refusing to hold a charge on this trip and it’s now a couple years old, tired, and done with me. And when you are a woman alone on the road, in towns you've never seen, your phone is not a convenience. It is a lifeline. 

So, in walked me, to a Verizon store I hadn't planned on, with an upgrade offer waiting and a gut feeling that this was going to go well.

It did. Even though it was 9:20 in the morning and they'd only opened twenty minutes before, they were already busy. A gentleman named Ken came over anyway, just to tell me it'd be about ten minutes and to have a seat. And Ken was wonderful. This is what I mean about southern charm, or small-town charm, or whatever the right mixture of the two turns out to be — I genuinely can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Ken was originally from Texas, his whole heart still there, but he'd come out to help his mother. He talked about his life a little, and it was plain as day that he adores his wife. He talked about her the way you talk about someone you still choose, every day, on purpose — she's creative too, he said, with real warmth in it. I don't think I've ever heard a man speak so lovingly about his wife to a total stranger in a phone store. It gave me hope. Maybe there are more Kens out there than I think.

He got me squared away, no upselling, none of the usual "you also need this, and this, and this" that I walk into every store back home in Pennsylvania bracing myself against — and still, somehow, I walk out with gadgets I don’t need or, if I’ve stuck to my guns and not added any extras, I still feel frustrated that I’ve had to say No a thousand times. I'm working on that about myself. But Ken didn't do it. He just helped. And then, hours later, he texted to check that everything was working fine! Come on now. How awesome is that!

And then — dear reader — when I tried to roll my back window down, it worked! 

Feeling like it might be my lucky day, and that taking chances pays off, I went and did something else I'd been putting off: getting the back of my hair trimmed. My hair grows fast, and I have a long history with hairstylists — one who was wonderful and then left, another who was wonderful and then left, a parade of colors and cuts over the years, pink, shaved, long and gorgeous (I still miss that one, if I'm honest), blonde, dark, everything but red. I walked into Hair Play Salon and Color Bar, a block from my Airbnb, and asked Tara if she'd just trim the back, dry, no wash, so I could watch it happen and know exactly what I was getting.

If you ever want to know a town, go get your hair cut there. That's where all the real knowledge lives. And this shop had it — that easy, unforced warmth that doesn't feel like a performance. Back home, conversation can feel like work. Down here, it feels like you've been let into the family. Maybe that's just how they treat the tourists. I've decided to believe it's how they are all the time.

Still craving that burger, I walked to the historic district, sat down at the next place I found, and opened the menu. No burgers there either. I asked, a little sheepishly, and the server pointed me a couple doors down to Luther's or Hemingway's. I know, you would THINK I’d have picked Hemingways, but she had assured me Luther’s had a burger, and it would be a good burger. 

It was, without exaggeration, the best burger I have ever eaten in my life. Amber was behind the bar — sweet tea for me, not a drop of anything stronger, and somewhere on this trip I have quietly become a sweet tea person, which I never saw coming. Amber grew up in Beaufort, lived for a while in New Jersey and New York, and came home anyway. She was wonderful, and she offered to take my picture right there at the bar, no fuss, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then I popped into a few book stores (I’m going to do a separate post on all the bookstores!) and finally made my way back to the Airbnb (I’m also going to list all those in a separate post!). 

So here's where the day landed: a day I had planned to spend indoors, hiding from rain that was supposed to fall from sunup to sundown. It didn't rain a drop until nine o'clock that night.

It's funny — I arrive in every town and immediately think, this is the one. Harrisonburg, maybe. North Carolina I never really got to know; that was just a one-night stop to break up a long drive, nothing against it. Charleston, where I stayed in Mount Pleasant with the beach practically outside my door, is the town I'd move to tomorrow if I won the lottery. And now Beaufort — beautiful, historic, gentle, full of the kind of nature sounds that feel like a good friend sitting quietly beside you. An hour and a half from Charleston, an hour from Savannah, all that charm in one small place, and I haven't even scratched the surface of it yet.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Savannah. Can it top all of this? I honestly don't know, but I’m betting I’ll adore it just as much as all the other places on my journey. 

So here it is again, the lesson I keep learning on repeat this trip: if you think you shouldn't, do it anyway. Bring the swimsuit. Go before the rain. Say yes to the Verizon store and if the trim turns into a haircut – it grows! But what you can't get back is a morning you talked yourself out of. Thank goodness I listened to the “do it anyway” voice!

Sweet things ahead! – Birdie Jane