Published: September 13, 2009 11:31 pm      

Star of the Week: Jessica Fuller

Jessica Fuller loves to travel. But some of the traveling she does is not so fun — she makes the 45 minute commute from her home in Butler, Ala. to work in Meridian everyday.

Jessica spends most of her time working. In the daytime, she works at The Meridian Star as a switchboard operator. At night she works as a grocery store manager in Butler.

With an 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. work schedule, most of Jessica's days give her little time to do anything besides commute, work, and sleep. But on her days off, she loves to have fun.

Hanging out with her friends and very large family (she has 15 nieces and nephews), watching movies, and riding 4-wheelers in the mud are some of her favorite ways to spend a weekend. But traveling is at the top of her list of free-time activities.

With family all over the country, Jessica has been to California, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Wyoming, and Florida, just to name a few.

Colorado, she said, was her favorite trip because of the beautiful landscapes, especially the snow-capped mountains that can be viewed in the summertime.

"You could just see for miles," she said. "You could see a storm coming."

But even with a large number of U.S. states under her belt, Jessica said her travel bug is far from satiated.

Partly thanks to her interest in the royal family and her own family ancestry, where Jessica would most like to go is England. "I just want to go there are listen to people talk and maybe catch a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth," she said. But one of the places she visits most often is in the opposite direction.

Every other year, Jessica said, she and her mother go to visit her brother in Riverside, Calif., about two hours south of L.A.

Riverside, she said, is quite different from Butler - and in more ways that you might think. "Ten minutes from my brother's house there's a horse town where you can tie horses up outside of a building," she said.

In her visits to Riverside, Jessica has neglected seeing the sights, going to places like Universal Studios and the set of T.V. show Desperate Housewives, where she saw the famous fictional street, Wisteria Lane.

Jessica, who has always lived in Butler and is a graduate of South Choctaw Academy, is leaving her future open for the time being. She said she wants to go to college, but she hasn't yet decided on a field of study, and she's not sure yet if she wants to have kids. But one thing she is sure of, whatever she does, she wants to be able to travel.