As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I moved through the southeastern states fairly quickly, and now I’m in Texas. I have some miscellaneous pictures from the southeast that didn’t fit in any particular blog post, so I decided to do a quick round-up as an opportunity to do a random photo dump.
After flying back from my visit to the West Coast, I drove from Atlanta to Lithia Springs, Georgia after landing to bring myself a little bit closer to my next destination and break up the drive a bit for the following day. My hotel of choice was the Courtyard by Marriott Atlanta Lithia Springs.
After departing Lithia Springs, my next destination was Birmingham, Alabama. I’m guessing that there was an event happening in the area, because it was difficult to find some cheap hotels (even with my promotional discounted rate), so I opted to stay at the Marriott Birmingham.
Because of my Titanium Elite status, I got upgraded to a corner room on a high floor, which was great. Unfortunately, their M Club Concierge Lounge was still closed and they were still blaming the pandemic for it, which meant I wasn’t able to get unlimited snacks and beverages like the highest elite members usually do at full-service corporate-run Marriott hotels.
After Birmingham, I made my way to Jackson, Mississippi. I decided to stay in Ridgeland, a northern suburb of Jackson. My hotel of choice there was the SpringHill Suites by Marriott Jackson Ridgeland/The Township at Colony Park.
This was a very pleasant hotel; the staff here was particularly professional, and I got assigned a room with a nice view. The location was also fantastic—it was easy to get in and out of the hotel parking lot, and there were a lot of nice shops and restaurants nearby. I also really liked the architecture of the buildings nearby in the area—they had almost a classic charm to them, but didn’t look old or run down.
People sometimes get a little bit confused when I say that I literally bring my entire computer with me and set up my entire workstation at hotels if I’m staying for longer than one night, in order to make sure the quality of my work is not being affected by my travel. To provide a visual on what this actually means, I decided to take a picture of my room in Ridgeland after getting everything set up, rather than before.
In my blog post about the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, I mentioned that the other half of the building contained the Museum of Mississippi History. I ended up running out of time and didn’t really get an opportunity to go through it as slowly and thoroughly as I wanted to, so I figured I would just post one of the photos I captured from there in this round-up.
After Mississippi, I drove through Louisiana and made my way towards Texarkana, a city that is split between Arkansas and Texas. My hotel of choice in Texarkana was the Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott Texarkana.
This hotel wasn’t really the best, and the person who installed the curved shower curtain rod in my room didn’t use both halves of their brain on the day they were installing it and drilled it in curving down instead of to the side, so the shower curtain literally wouldn’t stay extended all the way. At least I got a nice view of the car wash next door, I guess?
And with that, I’ve conquered a visit to all the southeastern states, filling in the blank spot I had in that corner of the country.
For the next week and a half, I’ll be in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It’s the beginning of a new month, so I have quite a bit of end-of-month finance tasks to wrap up for work from October. Afterwards, I’m meeting up with my friend and former assistant Monica to go exploring Dallas, so there’s more to come soon…