Location: Parker, Florida, USA
We left Blacksburg and headed south, visiting friends and family along the way. After a few weeks of socializing, playing with the grandkids building marble rolls and having pillow fights, Thanksgiving was getting closer and we started feeling ourselves in a bit of a time crunch. Time to get moving!
Our first stop was Savannah, Georgia. We'd crossed the Savanah River many times on our way south on Rachel, but had never visited the city. We took this opportunity to explore it for a day and were not dissappointed. The city is peppered with small parks containing gorgeous, old, moss-covered live oaks.
On the waterfront we saw streets cobbled with ballast stones discarded from old sailing ships.
After Savannah we headed down to Newnan, Georgia to leave "No Sails" with friends while we rented a car and drove up to Mark's family's semi-annual Thanksgiving celebration / reunion.
We stopped in Greensboro, North Carolina to pick up Mark's mum, and drove for two lovely days to get up there. Unfortunately, the further north we went the colder it became. By the time we arrived there was snow on the ground and temperatures were below freezing. Thanksgiving day was forecast to be even colder with a high of 23 degrees F (-5C) and a low of 5 degrees F (-14.5C) with 25 mph winds! Brrr! We are not used to this!
As usual over the 108 year history of this gathering, the family-cooked dinner was delicious, the bad puns were atrocious, the singing was in multi-part harmony, and the comeraderie was fantastic. With 89 attendees this year, name tags were a necessity!
It was so nice seeing everyone again and meeting the "out-laws" newly marriend into the family. The after dinner activities included chamber music, paper aeroplane chaos, contra dancing, and more visiting with relatives between dances and during clean-up.
We learned that Mark's grandfather, a US Congressman who was killed in a plane crash during his freshman year in Congress on December 20th, 1928, was a personal friend of Calvin Coolidge.
Another tradition started by Mark's father's generation many years ago is to go bowling the Friday after Thanksgiving. We kept 6 lanes busy. Mark was able to capture a video of "Hambone" picking up a spare after rolling a gutterball. He turned 100 last month and still managed to bowl 3 games!
We also learned not to go bowling in the same block as one of only two stores in the Eastern US that sell recreational marijuana. Having opened for the first time only days before Thanksgiving, the several-hour-long lines continued to stretch around the block on bowling day – even in 23 degree F (-5C) weather!!
And we got to see a wild turkey walking up Mark's cousin's driveway only a few feet from the house!
After a wonderful Thanksgiving, we dropped Mark's mum off back in Greensboro and returned to Newnan to get "No Sails" ready to roll again. We had winterized the water systems knowing it would be experiencing freezing temperatures while we were gone. After "de-winterizing" we said goodbye to our friends and continued south.
Our first stop was Williams Country Store, a small gas station, convenience store, and restaurant in Haralson, GA. Had it not been recommended to us by our friends in Newnan, we would have likely passed it by. That would have been our loss, as it turns out that they make arguably the best homemade sausage in the entire civilized world. After sampling sausage biscuits, we decided to buy two pounds to take to Parker, Florida to share with our friends. As we placed our order at the counter, we were told they sell over 600 lbs of sausage a week, ship a lot of it out of state, and used to deliver it regularly to the Jimmy Carter White House. What a treat!
Our second stop was Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia (we're so glad to be back in "cruising" mode rather than in "making tracks" mode!). We were looking forward to this stop, as we had just been to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home, Campobello Island, on our way back from Nova Scotia last summer. We knew nothing about the little white house when we arrived, and, if our friends hadn't mentioned it, we would have likely missed it.
The museum is wonderful and the staff was very helpful. We learned about the hand controls FDR designed so he could drive around the countryside. We saw a miniature replica of the Mayflower built using an actual piece of wood from the Mayflower obtained from the Society of Friends up in Massachussetts, complete with onion skin sails and rigging made from a lady's hair. We learned that the house was built while Roosevelt was governor of New York and was so named because it was called the "little, white house" as it was being built, not because it became "The Little White House" after he was elected president. We learned that he didn't like arms on his wheelchairs so he could slide himself in and out, maintaining as much independence as possible. We learned that his car had an 8-cylinder engine that was faster than his secret service detail's 6-cylinder cars, allowing him to speed ahead and pull off and hide in a corn field to ditch them. He'd wait for them pass by, then go cruise around for a while on his own. We learned that this is where he died of a massive stroke during his third term when he was 63 years old. We learned a lot about Roosevelt that wasn't covered at Campabello and are very glad we decided to visit.
Then it was on to River Bend Park, Georgia for a couple of days in the rain while we waited for the weather to clear.
From there we headed on to Parker, Florida, where the eye of hurricane Michael made landfall.
Once we crossed into Florida we started to see the effects of the hurricane. Trees fallen on houses, more and more blue tarps on roofs, missing road signs. Entire billboards snapped off at the base.
Huge old live oaks just tipped over with their roots pulled out of the ground. Acres of pine trees snapped off halfway up. As we approached Parker, the destruction became more widespread. Downed telephone wires and power lines piled up on the side of the streets, cut loose so new ones could be raised. It's been nearly 2 months since the storm, and there are still huge piles of wire, roofing, wood, brush, personal belongings, abandoned vehicles, demolished buildings, etc. everywhere. Many houses are nothing but rubble. It looks like a bomb went off here!
Except that there are houses interspersed that have NO apparent damage. How weird! And how those people must feel to look out from their 'saved' home and see the devastation around them every day! Unfortunately,this is the "new normal" for all the people here for quite some time to come.
We arrived at our friends', parked "No Sails", counted our blessings, and got together for happy hour, a wonderful dinner, and as good a visit as we could muster, given the circumstances.
We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and we are immensely grateful for all of you.
