Two Weeks in Southeastern Georgia

Spending Two Weeks in Alma and Vidalia, GA | February 2024

When Curtis first accepted his job, we were told that we would usually know his schedule about 6-9 months in advance. Coming from the military where it seemed like we had several last minute changes to our plans, whether that be with the submarine’s schedule or moving around the country, hearing that we could plan at least 6 months in advance sounded great to me. As it turns out, that hasn’t really been the case, at least in this first year and a half. This spring has been sort of an extreme example of how things still can change at the last minute. But truth be told, we kind of thrive under these last minute changes. It’s genuinely fun to me to think that sometimes, we have no idea where we’ll be in a month, or how long we’ll be where we are. Maybe I won’t always feel that way, but at this stage of life, it still feels like an adventure.

We got our first iteration of this spring’s schedule last summer. Since then, it’s changed many times. With each change, we would immediately come up with a new plan. Sometimes we planned road trips to get to different places, other times we planned how we could leave the van at one of our family’s homes and take a rental car between jobs to keep the mileage on the van lower. When we left for our Gulf Coast road trip that would ultimately end up with a week of work in Wilmington, we thought we’d be heading back up to the Midwest right after that week and stay for a couple months working at a few different assignments. But just two days into our road trip, we had a big change of plans: instead of going back to Ottawa, IL to work at one of our favorite plants from last year, we were being sent to Southeastern Georgia. I was a little disappointed because like I said, we really enjoyed Ottawa and were looking forward to going back, but that feeling quickly passed when we jumped into replanning our spring.

While there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about being in Southeastern Georgia, we were still excited to get to “live” in a different place for a couple weeks. Curtis always says that he’s willing to work at any plant at least once. I was especially excited to spend a little longer avoiding winter weather and enjoying the Southern sun. And since we were already heading down South, it wasn’t too hard to plan what to do between being in NC and GA.

The only real downside was that the plant is relatively remote, and with this being a last minute change, all of the good dog-friendly hotels were already booked up. We usually prefer to stay with Marriott or Hilton hotels in order to build up points with these nicer, more common chains, but unless Curtis wanted a commute that was over an hour long, it looked like we would have to branch out and find something different. After searching through hotels and vacation rentals online, we ended up making reservations at a family owned hotel just outside of Alma, GA, with the intentions of moving to Vidalia if a room in the Hilton opened up.

When it came time to make the drive South, we left our campsite in Oconee National Forest and drove a few hours South, on all new roads and through all new counties for us. We made our first stop in Douglas where we picked up a rental car, then drove the remaining 30 minutes to Alma separately. Finally, we arrived at our home for the next couple weeks: the Blueberry Plantation. We moved in to our room, got some groceries and a pizza for dinner, and then settled in.

The Blueberry Plantation ended up being a very comfortable and enjoyable place to stay. It was a 40 minute commute to the plant, mostly on a 4 lane highway road which was never too busy. The hotel was just outside of Alma, right on a golf course and next to a quiet neighborhood, making it a great spot to walk Charlotte around multiple times a day. We enjoyed trying different restaurants both in Alma and in Baxley, a town Curtis would drive through on his way to and from the plant. The only real downside of being here was that there really wasn’t much to do in terms of hiking or other activities we normally enjoy. However, Curtis had to work 12+ hour days every single day we were here, so it’s not like we could have done anything together anyway.

Since the only thing we really did here is eat, here’s a list of our favorite restaurants in case you ever find yourself in this corner of Georgia: in Baxley we liked Fuji Hibachi Grill, Mi Sombrero for Mexican, and Jin’s Chinese Buffet. In Alma, we enjoyed pizza from JJ’s Pizza, and ate at the Blueberry Mansion restaurant several times. We really enjoyed just being able to leave our phones in the hotel room, walk over, and enjoy good dinner, drinks, and conversation there together. We learned that they got their name because Alma is the “Blueberry capital of Georgia,” and while we didn’t have any blueberries while here, we did enjoy their blueberry margarita very much!

After a week and a half of staying at the Blueberry, a room opened up at the Hampton Inn in Vidalia, and we decided to move up there for several reasons: We could earn more hotel points by staying with the chain, we would get more counties by moving, we would be closer to the plant and a rental car return, and it would put us an hour North which would help for the next part of our Spring schedule. Of course, Curtis still had to work that day, so it was up to me to pack up our room, check out, and drive Charlotte and I to the new hotel and check in there. Thankfully all went well and the drive was very pleasant, and I got to see the plant from the road on the way. If we ever come back to this plant, we hope to be able to spend more time here in Vidalia because there’s slightly more to do (like go to the Vidalia Onion Museum!) and more restaurant options. But for our few nights here, we enjoyed having burritos and churros from Guacamole Mexican so much that we ate there twice.

And just like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, after we had our change of plans, we also planned out what we would do in the weeks we would have between this job and the next…but as it turned out, we had yet another change of plans that would end up filling those weeks and making this season entirely back to back. But once again, we weren’t disappointed, because we would now be going back to Ottawa after all!