Last Post for Awhile

We have been enjoying sun and mid 70's here in St. Augustine - finally our kind of weather! We have visited the famous Spanish fort again and walked through the historic district. The best known street is St. George full of restaurants, gift shops and people. Welcome to Florida and crowds!

Spent some time just sitting by the water watching the boats come and go in the harbor - so relaxing! Stopped by the St. Augustine lighthouse for another time and then went to Fort Matanzas at the south end of Anastasia Island. It is a very small fort used by the Spanish to guard the "backdoor" to St. Augustine.



Of course the beach always calls us for a walk and these beaches are spectacular!


This is our last "tourist" place. For the next few months we will be in relax mode - walking, riding bikes and swimming at the pool! In other words, nothing much to post.

Savannah GA

We have had 2 beautiful sunny days to revisit this area. We love the laid back feeling of Savannah after the bustle of Charleston SC. It is so easy to walk all through the historic district with few people and little traffic. The town squares throughout the city are such a nice place to relax. We spent one day just walking and enjoying the historic area and had lunch at our favorite place, Mrs. Wilkes. At one time it was a boarding house, but now they just do lunch in the boardinghouse style. It is a delicious southern lunch with all of those favorite dishes served family style - so many different dishes that you can't even taste all of them before you are full. These pictures are typical of the houses you find in Savannah.




Today we went to Fort Pulaski, a well preserved fort from the Civil War. Since we had thoroughly explored the fort on our last visit, we decided to walk the mile trail to see the Cockspur Lighthouse.

From the fort it is just a few miles to Tybee Island, a beach community. We revisited the lighthouse there and even found the same seafood market as last time and bought lots of local shrimp!

Charleston

We finally found warm weather! And the big surprise - no humidity! We enjoyed a quick second visit here. We knew we wanted to do another carriage ride through historic Charleston, walk through the market and have low country boil for lunch and we did all three! This time we also visited the only tea plantation in North America and saw how tea is made. Since I love tea, this was especially interesting to me and I learned a lot! There were acres and acres of tea plants, an evergreen that is disease and insect resistant. The new growth from May to September is "mowed" off the top whenever there is new growth of more than 3".



This time of year the plants are just starting to bloom - small white flowers.


With such beautiful weather, we spent a day at Folly Beach near Charleston. It was the typical beach area, but relaxing to just sit and listen to the surf.

Outer Banks

We have had a very busy 2 days seeing the Outer Banks. The first day was all about lighthouses and 3 of them are south. We drove all the way to the end of Hatteras Island and then caught a ferry to Ocracoke Island and drove the 12 miles of the island to see its lighthouse. The little town was quaint, but everything was closed for the season. We stopped to see the wild ponies that have lived on the island for 200 years and are now looked after by the National Parks. Had a little time to visit the beach and the ocean, but no shells. Then back on the ferry to Hatteras and its lighthouse, probably the most well known one.




The south end of the Outer Banks has several small typical beach towns. Most however is National Park lands with birding areas, dunes and Pamblico Sound and Atlantic Ocean access.
The next lighthouse was Bodie Island which is undergoing renovation and was surrounded by scaffolding and wires to anchor it all to the ground.

The second day we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial. We now know why they picked that hill for glider flights - the wind always blows! The exhibits were very interesting.

Then we headed to Jockey Ridge State park which has the largest sand dunes on the east coast. We walked up to the top of the dunes with a gorgeous view of Pamblico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. It was worth the hike up in shifting sand!



The north end has three "touristy" beach towns that run together - Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head. The season has ended, but one can imagine what it would be like in the summer! No shortage of rental houses everywhere and lots of stores, restaurants and attractions to capture your money. It was a great time to come and we had sunny but cool weather, made colder by the constant wind.

The Latest Updates

We would like to welcome Elizabeth Rose Mintz to the family. She was born Oct. 29 after much coaxing from her parents and doctor. She and her momma have had a few complications so they have been in the hospital and hope to go home today. Congratulations Sarah and Adrian! We look forward to meeting our newest granddaughter!

We spent 2 weeks in Hershey PA relaxing since we have been there several times. We did go out for a PA Dutch lunch one day and did some buying at the cannery. Of course, we stocked up on Hershey chocolate too! The leaves were just beginning to change, but it sure was cold!

We are now in Gloucester VA for our final week. We have had a couple of warm days, but mostly cold with a good breeze to make it feel even colder. We are still looking for the warm weather. The leaves here have mostly just turned brown and been blown off in the winds. Not a good color year where we have been.

We have also visited here several times, but wanted to revisit the Historic Triangle. Yorktown was first and has not changed much. They do have a free shuttle that takes you around the town and gives you some history along the way. We visited the Moore House where Cornwallis surrendered marking the end of the Revolutionary War.



We saw the most changes at Jamestown with a beautiful new visitor center and museum of artifacts. The archaeological digs they have are always different and this time they had 2 in the fort area they were getting ready to cover for the winter. The archaeologists were taking pictures and we were able to talk to one about what they had found - quite interesting! It is a beautiful place along the river and we enjoyed walking the grounds.




We always love to just walk around Colonial Williamsburg. It was a warm beautiful day with very few people.