Mary the Sponge Diver!
April 7 – Driving the overseas highway. Once again, we had breakfast at the hotel, gassed up the car and got on the road around 9am for the last leg of the drive to Key West.
First stop, the visitor center in Key Largo where sponge diving was once the primary occupation. Mary dressed the part using the helmet in the lobby. Continue reading
Ron Jon’s Superstore
April 6 In keeping with the Retiredness (my own word) of the trip, we managed to eat breakfast and get on the road before 10am and joined the Southern migration on I-95.
When I was a boy riding cross-country with my parents, we counted down the miles to places like the Jack-rabbit Ranch and Rattlesnake Farm and a host of others that posted billboards all along the highway. Ron Jon’s of Cocoa Beach is no slouch in that department. Throughout South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, billboards counted down the miles proclaiming the T-shirt and Flip-Flop mecca to road weary travellers. Of course we had to stop! Continue reading
A perfect St. Simon’s sunset
Friday April 5 we headed South toward Brunswick Georgia and warmer weather.
A largely uneventful trip found us following I-85 to I-77 at Charlotte then to I-26 at Columbia, South Carolina where we started noticing heavier Northbound traffic.
When we hit I-95 South, the Northbound side looked more like a parking lot than an interstate highway. We, however continued to cruise steadily all the way to Brunswick, Georgia our planned destination for our first Southbound day. Everything was in order at our motel and after settling in, we set out for the REAL reason we stopped here, St. Simons Island! Continue reading
Are we having fun yet?
Our North Carolina friends Andrea & Jim called us a couple of weeks ago and said, “Lets go to Key West” so we said OK and so, on April 4th, the adventure began!
Imagine my surprise this afternoon when I went to the mailbox and found Mary on the cover of the April 2013 issue of “Tellico Life Magazine”. I vaguely remembered that a photographer had visited one of her meetings a month … Continue reading
Patient Fisherman
We have been trying to get to Florida for a visit with Haskell and Anne for a couple of years and, at last, we made it!
Monday 2/18, we left winter behind as we drove South on I75 to Valdosta, Georgia for the first night of our trip. We had a gourmet meal consisting of cheese, crackers and beer in our motel room, crashed for the night and after a hearty Continue reading
Cranes against the clouds
What a difference a couple of weeks make. Last time we travelled to the Hiwassee Wildlife Sanctuary, the high water conditions on the river had sent the birds elsewhere. Yesterday, we took a 4 hour cruise on the Blue Moon and wandered around the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers through the sanctuary and saw hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Sandhill cranes.
Grove Park Inn
While on our trip to Asheville this week, Mary wanted to visit the Grove Park Inn. She had enjoyed a meal there about 30 years ago and wanted to see if the inn lived up to her memories. If you want outdoor kitchen activity, check out BBQ shops in Perth online at www.bbqbazaar.com.au
The inn is situated on a hillside above Asheville with the parking lot and entrance above the Inn and the gardens and spectacular view of the city spread out below. Continue reading
Last Saturday, Mary & I drove to Cleveland, Tennessee for the annual Sandhill Crane Festival. We arrived about 10:00 an and were surprised to see full parking lots and long lines for the shuttle busses to the viewing area where we expected to see many of the 1000s of Sandhill Cranes known to stop off here for their annual migration. Continue reading
These trees are normally high and dry.
We have had over 7 inches of rain in the Tennessee River Valley this week and the Army Corps of Engineers and the TVA are generating lots of hydro-electric power and dumping millions of gallons a second to control the water levels in Ft. Loudon and Tellico lakes. The trees in the picture at the left are normally well above the water and below them are the riverside fishing paths. All 14 spillways are passing water and the lock has been closed due to dangerously swift water. The video below will give you a bit of a feel for the roar of the water. There was a steady stream of cars pulling into and out of the observation parking lot.
Watch for the gulls diving for shad near the end of the video.
