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SUMMER ROAD TRIP TO GEORGIA

 
An Electronic-Free Family Road Trip in Georgia
It is definitely summer time. We have only been at the pool for 20 minutes.  I sit up, squint my eyes to search for my preteen girls in the pool, I finally spot them. Here they have a local pool to go to, of which I pay a sizeable amount for each month, so they can swim and visit with school friends and my kids are sitting in lounge chairs, perfectly dry I might add, texting the friends that are sitting right by them! Does this make any sense? I could be saving a lot of money each month by simply letting them sit at the house and text! 
It's time to wake up a couple of girls with a road trip with absolutely no electronics, this will include Mom and Dad also. It's time we all got to know each better, before they hit the teens and its too late to pull them back to reality. I called Dad, to tell him the idea of a vacation without any electronics and he is pumped, maybe not as pumped when I tell him "we" would be electronic free also! In the end we decided to take one phone in my purse just in case of any emergency's. I have to remind my husband looking up baseball scores will not be considered an emergency and the girls will not know we have a phone with us. 
The day of the trip was greeted with dread. I was beginning to think maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. The girls, who were going to be 11 and 12 this summer, were already pouting and already saying the dreaded word, "boring" and we were not even pulled out of the drive way yet! Camping for a week with two unhappy girls was not in my big plan, but I looked over to my husband and said its time to start the vacation and hopefully teach two girls you can really have fun without a phone attached to your hand! 
FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT STATE PARK 2970 Ga. Highway 190 Pine Mountain, Georgia   31822 Phone: 706-663-4858 Reservations: 800-864-7275      
Located near Callaway Gardens and the town of Warm Springs, this park is deeply rooted in the historical era of four-time President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Seeking a place for treatment after he was stricken with polio in 1921, Roosevelt traveled to nearby Warm Springs and built his Little White House. Several structures within the park were built by Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. Above Kings Gap is Dowdell's Knob, Roosevelt's favorite picnic spot overlooking a magnificent view of the valley below. A life-size sculpture of the beloved president welcomes visitors to the overlook. Hikers will enjoy the scenic trails in Georgia's largest state park, especially the Pine Mountain Trail, which winds through a mix of hardwoods and pines. The trail's highest elevation is 1,395 feet. Pine Mountain is on the southern-most edge of the Appalachian Mountain range. Hikers are sometimes surprised to find this terrain in middle Georgia. 
After a week in the wilderness with no electronics, the first day without was rough, even for Mom and Dad, but as the week progressed, it started to get a bit easier. We found out our girls are excellent card players and they can spot more out state tags then we did and stopping at old gas stations and talking to local folks can be fun, we were mildly surprised our girls are talkers without the phone to lean on. Because of this we were all invited to a local farmer's house who had a watermelon field near by and the girls were able to pick their own watermelon from the vine! To city girls this was big!   
It was a funfilled week and it ended better than I expected. Once home, we were anxious to see if they would go right back to their phones, but it was a wonderful surprise when all was unpacked and we were all sitting down going through vacation pictures, when it occurred to the girls they hadn't checked their phones yet, they were sure they would have ton's of texts to reply back to. We watched them run up to their rooms and they were gone. Feeling a bit defeated we headed to the kitchen to start dinner, but much to our surprise about 5 minutes later the girls were asking to help cook. We exchanged surprised glances and said sure, but it didn't last long, about that time the house was beginning to look like central station, when two or three friends came over. We sighed and thought it was a nice bonding with them for a week, but all the girls sit down and our girls started telling them about the vacation, showing them pictures, teaching them new card games and to our surprise they all talked and not one phone was pulled out!

Author Note: Tammy is the owner and author of the Frugal Southern Mom Blog. Visit her on FacebookPinterest, and Twitter!

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