Vacation 2014 Has Commenced. We Are On Our Way To The Great Open Skies Of The West / North West. Of Course, We're Starting By Heading North First But We'll Be Heading West Soon. Status: Little "Taste"!

We're on the road starting our vacation and we made it no further than about 40 miles up highway 55 toward Chicago (our first stop) when we HAD to pull off to partake of some soft serve served up out of a soft serve shaped soft serve shop!  Sadly, this is it for the Twistee Treat post...the rest is a repost from last year, but it was a good one.  Check it out!  The Retro Palms.




This might have been our favorite crash pad the entire 14 nights we were gone.  It's the Palms Retro Motel in Atlantic Beach, Florida.  I (unlike the Girlfriend) am not one to plan out a vacation adventure very much.  I like to discover great things rather than research and suss things out...that way, when you find a place like this, it's all the more special!

We were on our way from Myrtle Beach South Carolina toward the Florida Keys and arrived in

Jacksonville Beach just as the sun set with no place to stay.  Like I said...I'm not much good at

planning.  We figured that the Jacksonville area would be much like Myrtle Beach wherein there are

small "mom and pop" motels on one side of the strip and large high rise hotels on the other.  If there

is such an area in Jacksonville Beach, we couldn't find it. 

We stopped at a gas station to "take a break" and I pulled up our area  map on my phone and searched

it for motels.  Clicking through the  results yielded this joint!  It wasn't as cheap as what we are

accustomed to, but c'mon...just look at the place!  We were lucky enough  to snatch the last available

room for the evening and OMG...the beds  were SO much more comfortable than the $50-$80 a night

places we  normally frequent.  Beds?  Yeah, there are two beds in this room but I  didn't take the pics

until the morning AFTER we had messed one all up.   Note the Theme of the room?  Elvis movies. 

All the rooms have similar '50s theme!   This is one of those places  that will be on our list to revisit

for sure.  It was lovely and it was  sad that we only had the one evening to enjoy it.  At check in the

proprietor answered all our questions about how the motel came to be (I  can't begin to guess how

many times he has to go over this!) and was  happy to suggest some local places to get a late dinner

(Sliders Seafood Grille) as well as a  perfect dive bar (Pete's Bar - cash only AND serves Sailor

Jerry rum!). 

We never did get a chance to get to the local beach for the same reason  that I never got a shot of the

neon motel sign...it started raining just  as we finished loading the car back up!  We took the

opportunity to hit  some local antique malls, thrift stores and a small flea market.  Then  it was back on

the road.  The Keys was a calling my name!