Back to the Blog (after a slight delay)

To those friends who have checked this blog and looked for posts, my apologies. After posting all about last year's travel adventure (well, almost all of it), I hit a dry spell.

I’m really tardy in finishing up the blog entries from our Summer Adventure! It seems that we hit the ground running as soon as we got back to San Antonio, then Clayton’s school started… then, etc., etc.

After Atlanta, we camped at Oak Mountain State Park which is shouting distance from where our family lived most of the time from 1948 until Windy and Mother passed in 1996 and 1997. The park was great! Good fishing: Clayton caught his first and second fish ever. Was he thrilled! His Uncle Jerry and his cousins Jonathan and Joseph took him fishing. I visited with my Aunt Elizabeth in Childersburg for a day on Wednesday of that week. Also, we got to spend a couple of days in Arab with my sister Sally. She’s recovering nicely from her heart, kidney and diabetes difficulties and is adjusting fairly well to her living restrictions.

We got to attend the Green family reunion which was held at Shirley Winslett's (my cousin Dubby's widow) home in Moody, Alabama. A small turnout, but it was great to seem some of the older relatives and hear a few of their stories. Of course, this always makes me feel somewhat guilty for not listening more to these stories and capturing them for our children and grandchildren.

Or friends, Donald and Mary Ann Hand joined us at the park (along with Ann, Jerry and the boys) for our last night in Alabama. Good visit.

All in all, a good trip.

Atlanta - Monday

Monday found us visiting the World of Coca-Cola back downtown adjacent to the Georgia Aquarium. This was recommended by our friend, Miss Katie and was a real treat. We saw a lot of history and tradition about Coca-Cola and each received an 8-ounce glass bottle of coke that had been bottled right before our eyes.

Atlanta - Sunday

On Sunday, despite the threatening thundercloud-type skies, we went to Zoo Atlanta in our quest to see the baby Giant Panda. Peggy and Clayton have been reading about Mei Lan and wanted to see her. We were delighted to see not just the 2-year-old Mei Lan but also her baby brother Xi Lan (11 months-old) and the adult male and female. Xi Lan means “Atlanta’s Joy”. Quite a treat! The zoo was very nice and provided over 5 hours of enjoyment or us.

The reptile house was good and quite scary for one who cares not for snakes. One cobra was particularly active; br-r-r! Following the zoo adventure, we visited the Cyclorama; world’s largest oil painting supplemented by lots of sculptured figures and scenes all depicting the Civil War Battle of Atlanta that occurred July 22, 1864.

Just as we were leaving, the sky opened up and provided the much-needed rain that we had dreaded would interrupt our zoo trip. What good fortune that the rain waited!

Atlanta - Saturday

In Atlanta, we’re staying at Jones RV Park in Norcross, 19 miles east of downtown. On Saturday, we spent the day at the new (2005) Georgia Aquarium, the largest in the world! Clayton would have been happy spending the entire day just with the alligators. He did enjoy the “touch-tanks” where he got to tough manta rays and other fish and animals. The crowds were quite large (we probably should have gone on a week day), but we loved it.

Savannah fun....

Thursday afternoon, we enjoyed more touring of the residential areas and a great Savannah Riverboat ride. Clayton loved the paddle-wheel boat. We learned that Savannah is the 4^th busiest port in the U.S. Lots of history and charm to this beautiful Southern town! As I mentioned, Friday morning, we departed for Atlanta amid scattered thunderstorms. We had three along the way that slowed us almost to a crawl. But, thankfully, the awning held.

Savannah downpour....

Lots of rain while we were in Savannah! Wednesday we went to the City market and drove through lots of the beautiful historic districts of Savannah. During a torrential thunderstorm in the afternoon, we sought shelter for about 40 minutes at a restaurant in the Market. When we later arrived back at our camp-site, we were sorry to see that the “monsoon” (as one of our camp-site neighbors called it) had broken our long roll-up awning on the Airstream. The problem of the day became how we could “un-bend” the 28-foot 5-inch galvanized tube that contains the massive spring. This is how the awning rolls back up into its cover attached to the trailer. So, Thursday morning was spent working on that project, with a jury-rigged solution found after 5 or 6 hours of pushing, pulling and tugging. I’ll include a picture of the result that has stood up so far. (We’ve covered the 265 miles to Atlanta without losing it).

Savannah

Monday we rested up from the miles of walking the previous day, then departed on Tuesday for Savannah. When we arrived on Tuesday afternoon, we learned that we had just missed a couple of tornados that Savannah experienced on Monday. So the extra day spent in Charleston was good. A kind gentleman at the Kroger’s on Skidaway Island gave us great directions to the local Starbucks. So we were set with one of the essentials of daily life.

In Savannah, we are camping at the Skidaway Island State Park. There are only about a dozen of the 87 campsites that are occupied. Everywhere we have been, it seems that the state parks are having financial trouble and are having to make cutbacks on services. In Skidaway’s case, they have had to close their swimming pool for this summer. This park is cool and inviting with most of the area covered by an almost-complete canopy of trees.