Flagstaff

03 November 2019

We drove into Flagstaff from the Twin Arrow Casino and had breakfast at the Toasted Owl - East, where just about everything is mismatched (and for sale?).



After that we had some reunion chores because the 4th of July is coming up pretty quickly. This is the house in Flagstaff where the next Ramsey family reunion will be held. Actually it's the garage with a little casita above and a game room of sorts to the side. You can barely see the house, which is much bigger, behind the trees to the left. It's at the base of the Mt. Elden, so the national forest with walking trails starts just behind the house.

Reunion chores included checking out hotels (for any overflow), Lowell Observatory, and a place where there's horseback riding into Walnut Canyon. We had already checked out Bearzona and declared it fun. The picture below is from the lookout just below the observatory, looking towards the university. The observatory and its founder were involved in the discovery of Pluto.

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Tempe then Up to Northern AZ

31 October - 02 November 2019

The next day Chelsea had some appointments to keep and Heather ran her around. After that we made the mistake of going to the grocery store on Halloween after work but before dark - crazy busy, with half the aisles filled with checkout lines. We grabbed one of the very last pumpkins, which Chelsea expertly carved.

After Heather's appointment the next morning we had breakfast at Butterfields, then picked up some bagels near there at a place we hadn't been before, but looks good. We ran by a compounding pharmacy for more of Chelsea's meds.

The next day I got Chelsea's car emissions tested, then registered, then washed, while Heather got Chelsea to another physical therapy session. Divide and conquer! We had dinner at the Oregano's in Scottsdale. We had our first adult birthday party at one of these for our 40th.

After dinner we drove to a Drury in the north valley for the night. In the morning we had breakfast at bagel place near Dear Valley airport, which turned out to good but busy and overwhelmed and very slow. We drove east along the top edge of the valley then out the Beeline highway to Payson to check out several places where we are interested in potential houses. Most turned out to be in gated communities but we at least got a flavor for the area, then continued on through Pine, Strawberry, and Happy Jack towards Flagstaff.

Heather apparently wanted to have dinner at the mexican restaurant in Flagstaff with the Día de Muertos theme, but the only clue she could come up with for me was "deceased Hispanic", or something like that. I eventually figured out she meant MartAnne's Cafe, which was great as always. After dinner we drove east for a while to the Twin Arrows casino on the other side of the national forest. We had a very nice room for a very average price.

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Las Cruces then Tempe

27 - 30 October 2019

I spent Sunday, the first full day back in Las Cruces, just resting. Heather's Mom, Chris is doing better, mostly, but with some ups and downs along the way, and not much stamina yet. We spent some time going through the box of mail that had accumulated since Heather was last here three months before. We actually hit the gym three times. We have a new rule, to eat out on that day we have to have been to the gym (on a non-travel day). And you know we like to go out to eat.

I was starting to work off my green chili deficit, starting with Blue Sky in Amarillo, then green chili double cheeseburgers at the McDs in Roswell, and finally the promised land, Nopalitos in LC for queso and rellenos.

On Monday I got the car an overdue oil change and a car wash because we were getting ready to hit the road again already. It had been very windy the day before and it looked like that was going to continue, mostly from the north, so we had a drive with a cross wind with gusts at least into the 20s to look forward to. We had to go once more to Nopalitos for a green chili run before leaving.

After visiting with Heather's Mom's cousin NealAnn we grabbed a snack and gassed up, ready to hit the road and make some miles. We climbed out of the valley that Cruces is in and... stopped. There were both construction signs and signs saying there was an accident ahead. Hmmm. It has to be a bad accident if you need and have time to put up signs.

Well, we saw the construction soon enough. They were working on a bridge, and our side heading west  looked completely closed. They had us exit the freeway, cross over, then head west down a little two lane frontage road with no shoulders, 18 wheelers and all. Then we saw the sign "Next Interchange 14 Miles". Okay, this should be fun. About halfway down we completely stopped again for maybe 10 minutes. Finally a wide load truck comes by, followed by two huge trucks, each with a Super Stallion CH-53 Helicopter fuselage on them. I don't think they were too heavy for the bridge under construction, but maybe too wide.  We finally got going again, albeit slowly, and after about twelve miles we finally saw the wreck.

They were to the south of the freeway, so I'm guessing the north wind had at least something to do with what happened. I'm guessing it was at least three semi trucks, but it was hard to say with them all mushed together, one of which had burnt almost to the ground and was still smoking. I think the people were long gone, but they had a crane on the freeway trying to separate the bigger sections of the trucks so they could remove them.

Stay the hell away from semi trucks on the road! Don't follow too close, and surely don't pass them and then just slide in front a couple of car lengths ahead. They just can't stop that fast.

After about an hour and a half to go 15 miles we were finally directed back onto the freeway. We talked about how after a delay like that people tended to rush even more, causing subsequent accidents. Sure enough, a few more miles down the highway was another semi, on its side on the median on the south side, so I'm guessing at least partially blown off the road. The driver looked okay because he was unloading the cab of his personal possessions, but his cab and the trailer and all its contents looked trashed. So don't hang out alongside semis unnecessarily, either, especially on the downwind side.

We made it without further incident to Tucson, stopping at the Costco to pick up some cheap premium to wash out the crappy NM gas. After a snack we were in the middle of rush hour, but it was Tucson and there weren't any wrecks so it really wasn't that bad, and we had recently seen worse. Since we were now later than expected we saw the sunset from the road, backlighting Picacho. The three lanes now continued until the last 20 miles or so into Phoenix. If they can get money for that last bridge over the Gila river then it will finally be three lanes all the way between Phoenix and Tucson.

We picked up some dinner and headed over to the place our oldest daughter Chelsea has with her boyfriend Travis.

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Leaving Wichita

25 - 26 October 2019

It was originally going to be a bit of an experiment for me to drive by myself from Wichita to Las Cruces, considering we had only driven cross country together for the first time a couple years ago. But now I had already driven farther getting to Wichita, so no problem.

In the morning I packed up the she shed, then had a quick snack at McDs, picking up some coffee and iced tea for the road. I filled up the car with gas, and for the first time ever, without stopping ran out the tank until the needle was below the top of the E line, almost to Amarillo. I guess after nine days I was ready to get out of Wichita and a little time alone was welcome.

My route was a little off the beaten path but turned out to still be mostly four lane divided, with isolated stretches of two lane with no shoulders. In about the third ring of progressively smaller suburbs around Wichita, in I think Kingman, there was a Carnegie library right off the highway, so well cared for it looked new, and still the town library. Farther down the highway at an isolated curve it looked like a thundering herd of trash pandas had crossed the highway, because several didn't make it.

I passed the world's largest hand dug well. I didn't know that was a thing, either. Somewhere along the way there was some sort of windmill museum, with at least a couple dozen or so on display outside, most of them working.

I passed the Daltons gang hideout, famous in the late 1800s for robbing banks and trains. Imagine your town is so remote that being a hideout for a gang of killers is the claim to fame. As I was leaving Greensburg, in my rear view mirror I caught a couple of foxes running across the road just behind me.

As I approached OK I starting seeing chunks of ice and snow melting on the road, which was otherwise dry. As I got into OK there was patchy snow, and then into TX there were only patchy bare areas with several inches of snow, drifts in a couple spots, with some major (comparatively) intersections clearly plowed. Nonetheless the roads were dry or at most a little wet in spots.

In Borger TX, an hour outside Amarillo, I finally had to stop and get more gas and coffee, and drop off my prior drinks. Trump wear was clearly still in fashion with the locals. I picked up dinner at Blue Sky, a burger place in Amarillo. They have green chile! I swear I didn't see the bumper sticker in the background of the exploded burger diagram until about the dozenth time I looked at it.

After checking into a hotel down the block I ran out the cable TV, cycling though the channels until I was sick of it, falling asleep early and mostly staying asleep until 5a. Nice.

In the morning it was Ben's Donuts. They had koloches! I had to get a sampling of their other wares in order to avoid being rude. This included "fill on demand" donuts, which I had filled with raspberry jam.

There was just a series of sad cowtowns after leaving Amarillo. I consoled myself after each with a donut. There were herds of boing-boing deer on both sides of Roswell (pronghorn?). I tried to stop at a McDonalds in Roswell, but not the flying saucer one. Google maps had some trouble distinguishing between a McDonalds inside a Walmart and the adjacent McDonalds and we had a bit of a tiff. When leaving I entered my next destination and in spite it took me on a long cut and delivered me here. Bitch.

Okay, maybe by now I have spent enough time alone. My voice is hoarse from singing along with the radio and my cheeks are sore from whistling.

An hour outside Riudoso there was a guy on side of road with a backpack, not that unusual, but he was hauling up the hill on a unicycle. The road started curving and headed up into the mountains and trees. Just past the casino in Riudoso the road was gloriously backlit by the afternoon sun, highlighting the spray of the gentleman peeing against the guardrail on the side of road, as he continued to watch the cars going by over his shoulder.

The road curved back down out of the mountains, past the giant pistachio nut, and then White Sands. Driving up the hill past the missile test range I was thinking of when the Trinity site to the north is open (twice a year?). Finally I went back down the pass with Las Cruces spread out in the valley before me.

It was so nice to see Heather again. We haven't been apart that long in a very long time, especially after spending so much time together on the boat. Brown chicken, brown cow.

Well, there's a couple days of my life.

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Handbook Meeting

21 - 24 October 2019

The meeting was surprisingly good. It was held at Wichita State, the main campus this time, at the top floor of the student union. The week went fast, and I managed to not get quite as exhausted by the end of it. Getting there a few days early was probably a key part of that.

We seem to be reaching critical mass for new bond content, at least in my small area. Part of creating new content is then educating on the new content, and work on a tutorial from the point of view of my little pond looks like it's finally going to happen.

As was typical we had a social Wednesday night, held in another campus building. We had an award for one of our compatriots, Shannon, who is heroically holding down the fort on our last big effort while we try to get this bonding content wrapped up.  While engineers and such made small talk (painful for all involved) the display in the lobby had a thing for free pizza. College has changed a little bit, I guess for the better.

It was great to see everyone, and I will try harder to keep the energy up between now and the next meeting, especially until the end of the year before we get back on the boat.

There was a cold snap as the meeting progressed. By my last night the space heater in the she shed kept blowing the power strip breaker, so the electric blanket still in the car from my adventures after the last meeting came in handy.

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Wichita Lineman (Writing That Is)

17 - 20 October 2019

In the morning I did not wake up in the she shed. I decided to have some breakfast first, and went into town to the highly rated Doo-Dah Diner. This is apparently some sort of nickname for folks from Wichita. Maybe they should try again. They were very busy and the hostess tried to steer me to the counter but I just couldn't do a stool with no back with my back right now, so they were nice enough to seat me at a table by myself. They had good, cheap food, with complimentary monkey bites. These turned out to be little fried bready, cakey nuggets with a texture halfway between a fritter and a cinnamon roll, covered with the same sort of sticky, sweet cinnamony goo in cinnamon rolls. Highly rated, indeed!

So after breakfast I still had the task of getting settled into the she shed. After all the drama of last night it was uneventful after texting back and forth with the she shed hosts. It looks like I was in the right place after all. I'll have you know I adopted this nickname before it became apparent that my hosts may be lesbians ("not that there's anything wrong with that").

Thursday was a big day of chores and getting settled into a new place for more than a week. There was laundry in a spotlessly clean place that had just opened up, a quick Costco run for pillows I needed and shirts I didn't, Walmart for pillow cases and a cheap box fan, and groceries so I didn't have to stop writing and leave just because I was hungry. In the afternoon I brought back some Panda Express and worked on the blog. In the evening I caught up with Stranger Things, especially since Heather didn't want to watch anymore.

In the morning I worked on the blog a little more, then finally banged out a couple pages of adhesive bonding text for the meeting. Friday night it was pizza again at a place called Picasso's. They had pizzas bigger than the tables in a French bistro, so the pizza boxes barely fit through the door. A slice was plenty for dinner. That evening I finished re-watching season two of ST and got started on three.

Saturday morning I wrote for the blog, and in the afternoon wrote almost four pages for the meeting. During breaks I cleansed my mental palate with episodes of BoJack Horseman. Saturday night I picked up dinner at the College Hill Deli down the street from Picassos, then wailed through the middle of season three of ST.

Sunday morning I was again back at the blog, almost caught up. In the afternoon I wrote about eight pages of text broken up by several episodes of Bojack. That makes a total of about 14 pages of text in three days! Well, that's really good for me. That evening I finished off season three of ST - excellent! I guess I'm as ready as I'm going to get for the meeting.

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The Wichita She Shed

16 October 2019

It's never been my ambition to be in Wichita for a week and a half, but I guess it worked out. I arrived in Wichita well after dark because of my long cut through Fayetteville, then further delayed by picking up a pizza on the way.

So with pizza in hand I enter in the address to the she shed, which it turns out is in an older neighborhood near the airport. The confirmation email reported that per some sort of (new?) AirBnB rule that they are reporting that there are firearms on the property. Okay, this is the midwest, and I'm from a small town where gun-racks in trucks were standard equipment.

Now the listing says it has its own private entry and parking space, but this turns out to be in the back of the alley. By now it is dark dark, and neither the alley nor the backyard is lit, so it's difficult to reconcile the pictures on the listing to what I'm (not) seeing. I'm pretty sure I'm at the right place, but not completely. In addition, there are an unknown number of dogs of indeterminate size making a racket behind the tall wooden fence enclosing the backyard I seem to have to pass through. They are being egged on by additional dogs in the adjacent yard behind a chain link fence.

Now I remember I have a pretty good flashlight is the car door pocket and start using it to figure out where I am by shining into the back yard and across the back of the house when I freeze: dark, dogs, guns on property, flashlight scoping out the backyard of a place I'm not entirely sure is correct.  Suddenly in my mind I see this situation described in the morning news with a tragic end for yours truly. Nope, I'm out of here.

On my way back out of the alley my headlights catch the waddling ass of something roughly large cat sized but with more like a rat tail. Is that a possum? Yeah, we're done here for tonight.

I made a quick reservation at a decent hotel near the airport. I tend to aim a little lower when Heather isn't with me. The shower in the room struck a small blow against tyranny of symmetry.

Thus began my month in Wichita, which according to outside world calendars was still apparently only nine days.

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Memphis to Little Rock to Fayetteville to Wichita

15 - 16 October 2019

After lunch in Memphis I hit the road again towards Little Rock, which was, much to my surprise, really nice! The area down by the river was beautiful and the downtown area was in great shape. I need to come back with Heather and spend a little time here. I had a big burger at Big Orange just north of the downtown. Since I was by myself I sat at the bar and listened to the conversations around me. Then Madi called and we caught up a bit.

This surprising side of AR continued when I got to Fayetteville the next day for lunch. It was a very cute little college town with hills and roads that weren't all straight. I had lunch in a grilled cheese restaurant near campus with a pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling. I had the design your own grilled cheese and learned I may no longer be qualified for that kind of responsibility. Perhaps I was a little too ambitious.

Again, I need to bring Heather back here, but she is still a little put off with AR from a trip here years ago. This is when we met our neighbors to some land near Beaver Lake that we bought from my mother. I won't get into how we came to own, sight unseen, real estate in the toolies well past the sticks in a state where it's apparently legal for toddlers to marry (of course as long as they have their parent's permission). And maybe our experience was a little exaggerated because we were already a little freaked out by just how rural it was as we headed farther and farther into the country to see the land for the first (and only) time.

Our immediate neighbor to the north of the land was as nice as could be, but almost a caricature. As we were heading down new the dirt track that had been cut into the side of the hill (this is important soon) he was chugging up the steep hill on his quad to check the mail. Now, I'm no longer skinny, but he had more than a few pounds on me, and nothing to restrain them but some lime green gym shorts and matching flip flops. But as nice a guy as you could want to meet, describing this "little slice of heaven" enthusiastically.

We explained that we had originally tried to approach the land via the county road but it was blocked off. He looked down at the ground apologetically and said "Oh, so you've met the colonel". While we had been trying to figure out why the only road (we knew of) to the land was blocked off and how to turn around we had been greeted by a lovely fellow emerging from his doublewide with a rifle, who advised us to "git off his proppity". After our "Wrong Turn" we scooted back out of the holler and found the new cut down into the valley and our much more charming neighbor to the north. "I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."

After Fayetteville, I kept going through Bentonville, which we had been to before and I had gotten mixed together in my head with Fayetteville. It looked like a typical suburb with strip malls. It was  nice enough, I'm sure in no small part from Walmart money, but with little else to really distinguish itself that I saw this time.

Having gone through Fayetteville I was committed to some pretty small roads for the last leg west to Wichita. It took a little longer than planned and I finally rolled in about dark. I picked up a pizza at Ziggy's on the way to my AirBnB, which I had mentally named the she-shed, because, well, that's a funny term, and it had been a very long drive.

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Birmingham to Memphis

15 - 16 October 2019

After leaving Birmingham I planned on having a late lunch in Memphis. We had driven straight through Memphis a couple of times and I wanted to check it out a little more. The downtown area had obviously hit bottom pretty hard, but it was on its way back up, with patches of new development between boarded up places. And the view of the river was amazing, with the bridges and even a riverboat chugging by.

In addition, Gus' Fried Chicken had shown up on a national list, so I thought I would give it a try. The coating on the outside is smoother than usual, but thicker and more substantial. It was a little spicier than I would normally choose, but it made it work. It was real tasty with an interesting texture, and kept the chicken inside very juicy.

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Brunswick to Birmingham

09 - 15 Oct 2019

Well, as is typically the case, Heather got through her list of things that need to be done before me. This causes tension because then the only thing on her list is supervising me on my list. Heather's mother came to the rescue by getting sick, so we quickly arranged flights and I ran her down to JAX to fly home. While maybe this didn't seem completely necessary at first, it turned out to be a good thing Heather was there. Health care in Las Cruces can be poor to just plain bad. After my experiences at the beginning of the year I know it's nice to have someone who's not hurting looking after you while the medical system is doing its thing, or at least should be trying to.

We had originally planned, first thing after leaving the boat, to go back to Annapolis for the boat show. Then Heather and I would drive to Kansas City, put her on a plane to PHX for her now four times a year appointments, and I would drive the last couple hours to Wichita for my meeting. Because of the fixed gap between the boat show and meeting, and the need to get Heather to her appointments, I was going to be in Wichita for almost a week and a half.

As for the boat show now, I wasn't really interested in going without Heather, and it added another couple days of driving by myself to boot, so we'll miss this one and catch it again next year.  I think we already spent enough time in Annapolis this year anyway, and certainly enough money.

Well now I also had to get to Wichita myself. It was an awkward distance for me to go in two days even with Heather, so I broke it up into three pretty easy days of six or seven hours of driving each. Also I could go straight to Wichita rather than the nearest big airport in KC.

I tried to work my boat list like I was still going to the boat show, and the extra days came in handy to actually finish up with the chores before I really had to leave for Wichita. I had arranged for an AirBnB there which was suspiciously cheap and was now already paid for, so I figured I would still get there by Wednesday and work on writing and such for the handbook meeting the next week.

I finally hit the road on Monday. South of Atlanta there is a liquor store with lots of billboards, and I needed gas anyway, so I stopped there. It's difficult keeping track of various state and county liquor laws, so I thought I would stock up with travel sizes while it was convenient. Inside they had all sorts of GA and experimental type aircraft hanging from the ceiling, including this guy who looked a little familiar.

The first night I spent in Birmingham AL. I went to the local Hattie B's there and picked up some takeout chicken because once I got to the hotel I wasn't leaving until morning. The area where the Hattie B's was was obviously working hard and doing pretty well at it, but it was sporty in parts of the center of town. The outskirts looked a lot like suburbs anywhere.

The next day in Alabama, farther down the road towards Memphis, I came upon this. It looks like this guy was hauling a long trailer that was in turn hauling a short but overloaded trailer that blew out a tire. He's lucky the whole parade hadn't flipped. Safety, people!



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Wrapping Up in Brunswick

07 - 08 Oct 2019

Some folks live on their boats year round and decorate them just like any other home.

One of my remaining chores was to change the boat zincs one last time this year. The heat exchanger zinc looked a little wasted, even considering it had been in a week longer than the others. I'm now hoping some of this is due to the constant use. The engine was running for most days for more than a month, averaging more than eight hours a day. That's a lot of water flowing by. We'll see how this compares to the next two or three months of still water, with the fish hanging of the side of the boat for backup.

Since our usual bottom cleaning guy hadn't gotten back to us yet and we only had a few days we were fortunate to catch Bobby in the parking lot after after he had finished someone else's boat. He said there was just a light scum since our last cleaning in Annapolis five weeks ago. We'll see how it looks at the beginning of the year, but we have a bottom paint job in our near future. The prop zinc was still there, but obviously we  had lost a lot of weight in just five weeks. Again, I hoping it it the agitation from use rather that some sort of other electrical problem but we'll see at the beginning of the year.

A lot of what needed to be done was just cleaning, sorting, and organizing. I also needed to pack for an almost three month road trip. This included a meeting, which compared to my current lifestyle is relatively formal, like shirts with collars, closed toed shoes, and for the first time in six months - pants! After that we were going to be in some warm places like the valley, and some not so warm places like northern Arizona. I know I'm overpacking, but it's easier than whittling down the list any further (some variant of "My note would be shorter if I had more time"). The birds in the marsh across from the dock make a racket every morning to get me going.

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Getting Settled in Brunswick

04 - 06 Oct 2019

We spent our first night back in Brunswick at the fuel dock. We arrived too late to get diesel and a last pump out. This was okay since we wanted to pick our time to make our final docking, especially since we wanted to go stern in. Since we were arriving so late in the season they had us this time all the way up at 15 dock, and the very end of the inlet. We're about halfway down the length, so we'll get some steps in.

The next day we took an Uber to SSI to get one of our last rental cars for the year. First we had to get blueberry pancakes at Palmers to celebrate our return. From the end of the dock this is the view of the wrecked container ship.

Then we took the rental up to the Charleston airport to pick up our car. We had linner at a place we had on our list for some time but had never quite made it to - the Codfather! It was a traditional type British fish and chips place, and was very good. This from a guy who really doesn't like fish that much.

One night we grabbed some takeout from Fox's, a little pizza place in downtown Brunswick. This plaque caught my eye.

It felt good to finally be here, but we had burned through most of our reserve days. We had to wrap things up here quickly if we were still going to make it up to the boat show.

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Sapelo, St. Simons Island, and Finally Brunswick!

03 - 04 Oct 2019

The next night we were anchored again off of Dog Hammock, but this time on the other side of the channel a little more out of the way.

In the morning we passed by St Simons Island - almost there! The big, white ship on the right is a casino ship that goes out to sea.

New to the St. Simons scenery is the container ship wreck that happened a few weeks before. The red is bottom paint that should be in the water. Apparently it had 4000 Hyundais in it. The boat must have been highly automated because I think only four guys were running the whole show. Supposedly some system started moving water around, unbalancing the boat, but maybe that was difficult to immediately perceive in the weather they were in at the time. Before they were able to identify and correct the problem the boat rolled in a wave and just kept going. I had heard soon after it happened that they had rescued three of the guys. In the Uber over to SSI the next day the driver said they also got the fourth guy out.

Well, after SSI, we turn right up the river, under the bridge, and right again into the Brunswick channel towards town. We made it!

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Edisto, Beaufort SC, Savannah

30 Sep - 02 Oct 2019

We didn't get stuck behind the bridge just south of Charleston this time, although we were a little early. Down a few miles, off to the side a barge was in dry dock. The barges don't seem that big (tall?) in the water, but they displace a lot of water to float all that crap they are carrying. It looks like there is more under water than above. We anchored that night at Edisto.

We got to Beaufort the next afternoon after passing through this last bridge, where we regretted not taking the dockhand's advise to turn around and head up the river current to dock. We came in pretty fast but we had a wide open dock so it worked out fine fine. We ate at a little bar and grill overlooking the waterfront park.

On our way down past Savannah we passed by the cemetery from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We had visited it on that same southern tour we had taken years ago. There were a lot of big marinas and dock yards doing all sort of work around Savannah. The ship below caught our eye.

We spent that night at the City of Hope marina again, forgoing pizza this time and having dinner at the highest rated place in the area. We had a nice little table overlooking an overgrown creek.

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Charleston

28 - 29 Sep 2019

Since we were so close to Charleston we got there by mid day. On the way you could see all the traffic on the water, ferries going to the forts, huge container ships and cruise ships, and the newish bridge. The main span of 1546 feet is the third longest for a cable stayed bridge in the western hemisphere.

Getting closer to town you can see the effect of building ordinances on the skyline. No building is allowed to be taller than the church steeples.

I didn't realize at the time just how good a job Heather had done docking in the swift current at the dock. I thought we were coming into the slip pretty hot after having made our turn. Apparently she had it in reverse the whole time, slowing us down.

Since we arrived in Charleston so early in the day Heather had the idea to shuttle the car that afternoon and free up the following day. This turned out to be a good thing. On our way up to Fayetteville we got hungry and I started searching for a nice spot around Florence. As we approached it seemed very familiar. We had stopped here at Julia Belle's Restaurant on our first tour of the southeast more than a decade ago, long before everyone had a computer in their pocket. I must have found this place then in one of our guide books (remember those?).

Well, it looked the same inside and out, and I once again had their signature pork chop sandwich. It was more of a novelty the first time, but still one of the best.

This time I did notice that their electrician perhaps left a little to be desired.

It's good we had freed up the next day because it went fast. After a long day I was too tired to take the car to the airport that night, so I decided to do it early in the morning. When I left it was almost high tide and anything that wasn't floating was getting wet. When I got back maybe 90 minutes later the old fixed dock was almost completely underwater and creeping well into the parking lot.

On my way to the airport I stopped at a great little bagel place on the east side for some bagel sandwiches, spare sliced bagels, and more coffee. When I say small I mean it. There was barely enough room for three people to stand, which was awkward because I was in between the uniformed cop and the clearly freaked out long haired musician who reeked of pot. Everyone played nice, took their bagels and went their separate ways. On the corner this building was in the process of being moved.

Once I was back on the boat we got out of there as soon as possible before the current switched.

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Dewees Creek

27 Sep 2019

Making our way down from Georgetown we encountered some of the skinniest water we've seen. Like floating docks floating on mud skinny. 

Like ships that were completely aground skinny (where is the keel?).

A dredge was working part of the area. We ever so slowly crept around the dredge and barges, reading nothing on the depth gage more than once. We were probably technically aground, but just oozed our way through.

We spent the night anchored in the same spot just north of Charleston.

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