Beyond the Bubble

Author: Lisie Mehlman and Christine Nielson

Maybe it's our undying love of country tunes. Maybe it's our shared secret wish to be mistaken for southern belles. Or maybe we just have a thing for cowboys.

Whatever the reason, Lisie has been dreaming about a southern road trip since she first learned that it was, in fact, the Atlantic Ocean that lay to the east of our great nation. Claire, who had no real dreams of her own, jumped on the bandwagon.

Our road trip of the southeast provided ample girl bonding on the wide-open road time. There was time to debate the difference between fitting road trip music and cliché road trip music. "Life is a Highway" - cliché. The Titanic song - fitting is an understatement. There was time to wear our cowboy hats inside multiple southern fast food joints. This allowed us to try Chick-Fil-A, an establishment that a certain friend (whose opinion bears significant weight on the subject at hand because it is spoken with a legit southern drawl) had raved about for years.

We were not disappointed. It also opened us up to immense ridicule. Matching cowboy hats in public places drew us a lot of attention. More than once, we were asked, verbatim, if the rodeo was in town.

Our time spent out of the car was, arguably, even more entertaining. In Charleston, we took a highly informative carriage ride. The horse pulling our carriage was named Montegue and was incredibly disobedient. Repeating phrases such as "Woah Montegue" and "Montegue Woah" kept us more amused than you might imagine for the rest of the trip.

We forewent the carriage for a trolley when we hit Savannah, although we are still a little bitter that our travel buds opted against the Segway tour. Our bitterness was only amplified after enduring two grueling hours on the trolley with a tour guide who insisted on breaking into song sporadically when he wasn't pointing out landmarks significant to his immediate family rather than to say, the Civil War or Martin Luther King.

But we sure are glad we know which restaurant his nephew works at. From there, it was onto the beach. On St. Simon's Island there were picnics and long romantic strolls galore. Only Lisie could manage to get so sunburnt that she developed a dependency on Tylenol PM following a four hour stint in Georgia's partially cloudy 60 degree weather.

Claire's never-ending bitterness that Lisie got more sun than she was quickly redirected toward those who complimented Lisie's "tan." Claire is not a proponent of positively reinforcing a negative action.

Our first taste of southern living was almost as satisfying as our first bite of Chick-Fil-A. But, because we were unsuccessful at being mistaken for southern belles we will have to venture south again soon. Whoa Montegue.