I was face timing my oldest daughter today and being that she is getting married next summer, we were talking wedding stuff. She asked me where we stayed on our honeymoon and it reminding me of a hilarious story that I knew I had to write about today.

Jerry and I got married 22 years ago in Algood Tn, and we drove to Nashville to stay one night before heading to Florida the next day. I remember zero details of our trip down to florida except this part. It was day 2 and we had a coupon (that detail alone is awesome) to stay at a fancy Holiday Inn. We be fancy but cheap. It was late at night and we (when I say we I mean Jerry, I am confident I did zero driving) were so tired from driving all day. We pulled into the parking lot and Jerry went in to pay for our room. He sees a price advertised and is happy to find that it is even cheaper and we, in fact, do not need said coupon. He gets our keys and gets back to the car and tells me of this luck. We get up to our room to find it was so plain and so cheap looking, we assumed it was going through a remodel. Even when we saw the soap and shampoo having another name besides Holiday Inn we assumed the best. Maybe it had just been bought and they had not swapped everything over yet. We were too tired to care and when we woke up the next morning and could better see our surroundings, it explained everything.

Our original plan was to drive all the way to Orlando but stopped in Tallahassee because we ( again I mean Jerry but we are a team now) were too tired to drive. This quick change of plans was part of the mishap. When we woke up the next morning to head out we saw that right on the other side of the hill was the Holiday Inn….and we stayed in a Super 8 motel on our second night of our honeymoon. In his tiredness (this is where I give him full credit) Jerry totally missed the first parking lot and pulled right into the second one. He saw the sign he wanted and ignored….didn’t see the other signs. Boy doesn’t that sound like an analogy for so many things in life?

Anyway, that is the story of how Jerry and I stayed in a janky hotel just days into our newly married life. I am happy to report we never made that mistake again. Nothing against Super 8 Motels, it was actually a perfectly suitable place to stay and was great for the budget but it was a lesson learned about looking at details.

Below is a very well drawn picture to give you a visual of the trees separating the two hotels.