Mia Nomore′

The title could be the name of a tragic Italian opera, where the deep love of the young lead character’s life is lost, or his soul becomes consumed by a series of complex events in his life. I will explain what it means though, at a later point in this installment of our adventure.

After leaving the Everglades National Park at the end of February, we moved northeast to the Miami area, the polar opposite of the tranquility and beauty of the Everglades. Miami proper is a vast sea of hi-rise hotels and office buildings, but the up-and-coming Haitian district, rugged Little Havana (the Cuban enclave) and ultra-glam South Beach showcase the Miami of another era, along with nearby Coral Gables (featuring the Biltmore Hotel and the Venetian Pool). We connected with family members who were also visiting in the area and walked through some of the architecturally rich neighborhoods just south of the downtown area and spent a morning at Key Biscayne National Park. While Miami is not high on our list of recommended stops, there are treasures lurking beneath the surface and we were glad to have included it on our itinerary.

Our next stop was at a campground at the south end of Lake Okeechobee, the largest lake in Florida and largest lake wholly contained in the United States (the Great Lakes are shared with Canada). We were fascinated to learn how much sugar cane is grown in this area, and also that the huge fires we saw almost daily were in preparation for harvesting the sugar (with little regard for air quality). We used this stop as a base to travel to the Palm Beach area (Mar a Lago, the Breakers, Worth Avenue, the Flagler Museum) and the Ft. Lauderdale area, both very glamorous, but extremely crowded and built up. While visiting friends in Pompano Beach, we played our first-ever game of shuffleboard, a further qualification for our becoming senior citizens, along with our previous Bingo foray. We really are honing our skills to become Florida residents!

With St. Augustine firmly in our sights, we made a brief stopover in Melbourne and re-visited more friends there, then drove through Cape Canaveral, remembering previous shuttle launches we’d seen. The mid-coast is not quite as built up as the south coast, and it’s possible that lessons learned from the hi-rises of Miami Beach will keep that from happening. We appreciate that St. Augustine has restrictions on building that will prevent our beach from one day having tall buildings as far as the eye can see.

 

Back at our new home in St. Augustine, we had to make some decisions regarding our condo. Initial thoughts of removing wallpaper, painting and “freshening” kitchen cabinet doors turned into a full-blown renovation, with new kitchen cabinets and appliances ordered, some structural modifications and a longer stay than anticipated. As the spring wore on, it became clear to us that our energy was focused on our new home in St. Augustine and the last leg of our Mia adventure would have to be pushed back and compressed, or eliminated altogether.

After considering the rising price of gasoline and the increased demand for RVs in the Spring, we put Mia up for sale on eBay, and within a couple of days had several interested parties. A few phone calls later, we had a deal with a couple from Montreal, who immediately drove down to St. Augustine to make the purchase, and before we knew it, Mia was ready to head north to her new home. We’re sad to see her go, but happy to be free to concentrate on the condo, and happy that she will have a new family who we think will enjoy her every bit as much as we did (and even want to take her to some of the familiar and beautiful places she's been before!). We even have visitation rights in Montreal and St. Augustine (next winter) as the new owners plan on being here during the colder months, just as we will be. 

So Mia is no more (thus, the title of this blog), only a memory and a wonderful adventure from our recent past. Our current plan is to make our way north in early May (post-kitchen installation) and be back to Islesboro by the middle of that month. We’ll make a few stops along the way, but will save some of the sightseeing for future trips north/south in subsequent years. We will cherish the wonders that Mia and the past 18 months have provided us with. We’ll miss Mia but we won’t forget her and we appreciate your sharing in our adventure vicariously from afar.

Happy Trails,     Love, Bob and Patty

We've Become A Statistic...

According to the stats, eight hundred people become residents of Florida each day. On January 28 we officially became part of that number, because we closed on our St. Augustine condo that morning. It was very exciting for us, since we‘ve been daydreaming about the condo ever since we saw it for the first time. Right after the closing we took our first walk on “our” beach, then got to work cleaning the condo windows to maximize the ocean view. In the evening we had champagne to celebrate becoming a Florida statistic. Our first night was spent on an air mattress in an otherwise empty condo. The next night we had our first guests - a couple who lives in the condo complex, along with our real estate agent and his wife. Cardboard boxes served as tables; luckily our new friends are good sports.

Speaking of friends, the last few weeks have been chock full of visits with many friends in various places in Florida, from both our past and present lives. Here’s the rundown of those delightful visits.

The first stop was in Melbourne to see the father of a longtime friend. Next we headed to Tavares, part of the lake district, where we stopped to visit friends from the early 90’s when Bob crewed for their Porsche racing team at Daytona and Sebring. Their impressive shop is filled with the latest Porsche race cars and state-of-the-art equipment, and brought back many memories for Bob of the fun and excitement of racing.

In Orlando, we visited old (longstanding, not elderly) friends of mine, who have a winter home there. Although Orlando is known for Mickey and Minnie, we didn’t go to the theme parks because we’d done that on previous trips. Instead our days were filled with walking, reading, movies, playing cards and generally taking it easy. We did, however, go to the Morse Museum of American Art, which houses an impressive Art Nouveau collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows and lamps, pottery and jewelry. Tiffany glass had never interested me before, but the museum docent brought to life its historical context and delicate beauty. Louis Comfort Tiffany had an estate in Laurel Hollow (Long Island), on Cold Spring Harbor, close to our former home, so that fact added to our interest in the Tiffany story. BTW, Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of the jewelry store magnate, although the younger Tiffany clearly had his own separate and successful career.

Heading west towards the Gulf Coast, we had lunch with a longtime UUFH (Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, NY) friend in Poinciana, then on to Bradenton to visit friends from Islesboro, Maine, where we spend our summers. They took us on their boat to Cortez, a fishing village on Sarasota Bay, for a delicious seafood lunch at a dockside restaurant called the Star Fish Company; we sat outside, enjoyed the sun, harbor sights and the shenanigans of the many pelicans. The experience reminded us of lobster shacks in Maine, where fresh lobster is served at picnic tables on the pier as lobstermen work nearby.

The Star Fish Company was so enjoyable that we went there again the very next day with a visiting New York friend, who was in Bradenton for a week’s escape from the vast accumulations of snow up north.

In nearby Bonita Springs there were no friends to visit, so we improvised and found socialization another way: attending Bingo Night at our campground. We debated about playing Bingo, as it clearly crossed the line to senior-citizen status. Despite likely teasing from our blog readers, we decided to go for it. We figured beginner‘s luck might bring some wins. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and we left a few dollars poorer.

Another place where we had no friends to visit was Weeki Wachee Springs, on Florida’s west coast. By the end of the day, however, Bob did have a friend, which I’ll explain in a moment. Since 1947 Weeki Wachee has been known as a roadside attraction for its Mermaid Show. The performance, similar to water ballet, is given in a vintage underwater amphitheatre fed by a natural spring. Mermaids use air hoses which are at the base of the “tank” and they are also trained to hold their breath for exceptionally long periods. After the show Bob happily posed with a glamorous mermaid. Voila -!- a new friend.     
 

We attended the Sarasota UU Church with another UUFH friend, who now lives in Sarasota and also had a lovely lunch with her in St. Armands Circle, an elegant shopping/restaurant district. St. Armands was probably one of the first planned communities in the country, although way ahead of its time. John Ringling, the circus millionaire, chose this area in the early 1900s for its pleasant climate and proximity to Gulf beaches. He designed and built an upscale complex of homes and stores, including stark, white, Italianate statuary decorating the sidewalk.

Next came Naples, the winter home of several Islesboro friends. We went with them to the Naples Botanical Garden, which is an extensive and spectacular collection of exotic sub-tropical plants not only from Florida, but Africa, Southeast Asia, Brazil and the Caribbean. The winding paths dotted with occasional water cascades made for a serene feel and a wonderful stroll.
 

Downtown Naples includes historic “Tin City” (former warehouses and docks), a sophisticated shopping district, and the town pier, perpendicular to the beautiful, long stretch of beach. The water is a soft aqua color with gentle waves, and the fine white sand almost looks like snow (something we have NOT missed). We confess that in Naples we also spent some time browsing in furniture and patio shops, gathering ideas for the condo.

This installment of our blog is written from Everglades National Park, a mere 1.5 million acres (which makes it only the fourth largest National Park). We’ve made plenty of new friends here: alligators, crocs and an amazing array of birds. As is our routine, we’ve gone on some excellent Ranger-guided programs (walks, a bike ride, and even a car caravan) which gave us the opportunity to see the birds and animals up close. On the other hand, the mosquitoes are plentiful and ferocious, and we don‘t care to be friends with them - so at certain times we’ve had to hunker down inside the motor home to protect ourselves.

The birds we observed included ibis, wood stork (who does the hokey-pokey, putting one foot in the mud at a time to feel around for food), blue heron, roseate spoonbill (as pink as a flamingo), anhinga (whose wings look like piano keys when they are spread for drying in the sun), purple gallinule, and a rare find: a handsome brown and white barred owl.

The ecosystem of the Everglades is fascinating. The water that fills this vast area has its origins in the mid-state lake district, northwest of Orlando. The lakes empty into massive Lake Okeechobee, which overflows seasonally and then slowly filters into and over the Everglades area. Over the years man-made canals and locks have disrupted this water pattern and thereby endangered some species of plants and animals. There is now a program in place to manage water flow better and hopefully correct some of this eco-damage.
 

BTW, the Everglades is technically not a “swamp”. The terrain includes pine forest, sawgrass prairie, hardwood hammocks, mangrove trees and of course water, including ponds, lakes and rivers. The rivers, which are called “sloughs” - up to eight miles wide, but very shallow - slowly but surely flow south to Florida Bay and the Gulf.  
 

That’s the latest scoop. Miami is next, and will surely contrast sharply to the quiet Everglades!
 
       Love from Bob and me,
                                    Patty

Feeling At Home In Florida

Since before Christmas, we’ve been anchored in Northern Florida, and we’ve felt increasingly comfortable here with each day. So comfortable in fact, that we decided to buy a condominium in St. Augustine to have a permanent (?) winter escape from the snow and cold. Even though we’ve experienced temperatures in the teens (at night) during our time here, we still feel that overall, it would be mild enough for us, and we won’t have to shovel the precipitation.

One of our objectives on the MIA trip has been to identify such a place for the winter months, and while we found many desirable cultures and climates in various parts of the U.S., each seemed to have some element that kept us from feeling comfortable enough to select it. Whether it was distance, government, earthquakes, finances, weather or housing costs, no place inspired us enough to seriously look at real estate. Until St. Augustine.

Soon after we arrived, we spent several days with a local real estate agent, first trying to identify where around St. Augustine we were most drawn to (we were all over the map at first, literally), then what kind of property, size and features we wanted and finally, just as we were getting discouraged and time was running out, we found several possibilities that intrigued us. Two were houses located right on the beach, and one was a condo, also right on the beach, just north of the St. Augustine downtown. In the end, simplicity won out, and we decided to try our hand at owning a home where you could just lock the door and leave, without having building exteriors and grounds to be concerned with. Time will tell whether we will adapt well to living in a condo in close proximity to other residents and having a Homeowners Association to contend with. But we love the views and the location. 

Interspersed between property showings with our agent, we explored around St. Augustine, north to the city of Jacksonville, west to Palatka and south just above Daytona. We found that Jacksonville was a pretty happening city, with professional sports teams, industry and crowded highways. There were charming neighborhoods near the St. John’s River and some derelict neighborhoods as well. Also, a couple of art museums, some theaters, vast suburbs (Jacksonville has the largest footprint of any US city) and urban problems (like violent crime), not unlike the NY area we lived in for many years.

Palatka (west) and areas south of St. Augustine were much more rural in nature, with palmetto forests, abundant, lush marshland and stretches of quiet, sandy, duned beaches. It was like being out on Fire Island in NY, but only minutes from the tourism bustle of downtown St. Augustine. The downtown area, which is comprised largely of early 1900’s buildings erected by magnate Henry Flagler, is dominated by his namesake Flagler College. Tourist trolleys zig and zag through the narrow streets, shops mostly sell souvenir items and the local economy is very apparently driven by visitors. We enjoyed the “Nights of Lights” Christmas decorations, a New Years Eve chili cook-off and fireworks display, the weekly Farmers Market and the Castillo de San Marcos fort that guarded the harbor during its period as a Spanish colony. Most of the rest was ticky-tacky-tourist-trash, which we tried to step gingerly around.

We attended the local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship while in town, smaller than the Huntington Fellowship at about eighty members and lay-led. We were welcomed and felt right at home, so we believe we have a new religious home to look forward to as well (hard to imagine that it could replace Huntington in our hearts, though…). An unexpected surprise was a rendezvous with friends from Islesboro who were sailing to the Bahamas on their catamaran, and put in to port at St. Augustine. Their journey is similar in scope and challenge to our motorhome adventure, but with the added unpredictability of the ocean, and it was fun to compare notes.

While we wait for our condo transaction to close, we’ve moved inland west of St. Augustine towards Ocala and Gainesville. These areas embody the Old Florida you might picture in stories, with “cracker houses” shrouded under majestic oaks that drip with Spanish Moss. We strolled through charming small towns like Micanopy and McIntosh, former booming citrus towns which today epitomize picturesque, relaxing and laid back, absent the hustle-bustle found on the coast. We toured the historic homestead of Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, restored to it’s original charm from the days when she wrote “The Yearling” and other books about life in early, rural Florida. Life is simple in these small, quaint towns, and it’s not a bad life at that. Maybe we’ll get more of a taste of it from our new St. Augustine base when we finally are able to settle in next Fall.

While Patty toured some of the older sections of Ocala, I tested my reaction times at the Don “Big Daddy” Garlits Museum of Drag Racing there, and relived days of my youth, nose buried in "Hot Rod" magazines. We spent only a few hours in the college town of Gainesville and were astounded at the size of the campus and how it dominated the town. Not much there besides U of F – Go Gators! Next, we head further south and west in our new home state to be.

Bye for now…     Bob

Island Hopping

We’ve spent the majority of our time over the last few weeks hopping from island to island along the Atlantic coast, north to south, from South Carolina to Florida. In order of appearance:

Kiawah Island, SC. This is where I fell in love with the marsh! Right now the marsh is golden in color and reminds me of the autumn Iowa wheat fields. The marsh is expansive, serene and peaceful, beautiful. Kiawah Island itself is upscale, with meticulous homes in gated communities, mostly inaccessible to common folk such as ourselves. The exclusive feel is not our cup of tea, but those marshes definitely grabbed me right off the bat.

Hilton Head, South Carolina, one of my sister’s favorite vacation destinations, and famous for its golf courses. Hilton Head is upscale and stylish, with many gated sections and carefully regulated shopping plazas scattered throughout the island. The beaches feature hard-packed sand, which made it easy to walk for a long distance along the tern-dominated shoreline.

Tybee Island, Georgia. One peninsula of Tybee has a historic district containing both a lighthouse and buildings from the former Fort Screven. Barracks, officers’ homes and the guard house, all privately owned now, give the area much charm and character. Farther along the island, though, typical 60’s style motels, shops and restaurants line the main street, parallel to the ocean. Even so, it’s hard to argue with the beauty of that ocean!

Cockspur Island, close to Tybee. Cockspur is home to Fort Pulaski, a well-preserved brick fortress dating from the mid-1800’s, built to protect approaches to Savannah harbor. When built, it was considered an impenetrable fort, but Union forces attacked from Tybee with the new technology of rifled cannons. To  the surprise of the Confederates, the fort’s walls were easily damaged by these more powerful artillery, threatening the powder magazines and the lives of all in the fort, leaving no choice but to surrender. Cannonball indentations and breaches in parts of the fort wall still remain visible.

Adjacent to Fort Pulaski are walking trails, leading through marshy terrain (my new favorite landscape, as I mentioned above), and ending at the petite (46 feet) Cockspur Island Lighthouse, dating from 1856. We’ve seen that Maine does not have the exclusive on pretty lighthouses.

St. Simons Island, largest of the “Golden Isles” of Georgia. The Golden Isles are named for the vast marshlands which are yellow-colored in the fall, intermittently cut by streams, rivers, boardwalks, docks. Ah, so beautiful… no wonder I fell in love with this landscape. St Simons is home to Fort Frederica, established by British General James Oglethorpe in 1736 to protect the British colony of Georgia from Spanish raids. The hearty colonists who were willing to take a chance on life in the new world built houses of “tabby“ - a mixture of lime, water, sand and crushed oyster shells. Tabby is a surprisingly strong building material; the skeletons of the fort and homes are still in evidence. St. Simons also boasts an old-fashioned downtown section, with an 1862 lighthouse on the edge of the village.

Jekyll Island, GA. In the late 1800s and early 1900s this island was an exclusive winter retreat for the fabulously wealthy. Members of high society purchased the island and established the Jekyll Island Club. Many families (Morgan, Goodyear, Rockefeller, Gould, you get the idea) built “cottages” (i.e., mansions)  in a row adjacent to the clubhouse. Islesboro, the Maine island where we spend our summers, has a similar history. In  the early 1900‘s wealthy families built grand summer homes on Islesboro and established a genteel social scene in a beautiful out-of the-way place. In its heyday, Jekyll Island could only be reached by boat, although there is now a causeway. Islesboro, on the other hand, is still only accessed by ferry!

Cumberland Island, GA. This island trumps Jekyll Island... Almost all the land on this island was bought up in the late 1800’s by just one family, the Carnegies. The family built a huge main mansion and several other large homes, one for each of the Carnegie children when they got married. Unfortunately, the grand mansion, Dungeness, burned in 1959. Even so, its skeletal remains are majestic and give a good impression of what the Carnegie lifestyle must have been like.

Cumberland Island, now administered by the National Park Service, is a storybook  place. It’s peaceful and beautiful, with three types of terrain - the ocean beach, marshland (as you now know, my favorite!), and maritime forest. The forest’s moss-covered oak trees are gnarled and bent by the wind, like stunning sculptures. They provide a lovely arched canopy over the sandy, quiet roads.

Amelia Island, Florida. There’s a long strip of beach homes on the ocean side of this barrier island, plus a historic downtown (Fernandina Beach, on the Intracoastal Waterway) with lovely restaurants and boutiques. We liked this area very much, although our enthusiasm was tempered by the logging trucks which were constantly buzzing through on their way to the island’s behemoth paper pulp mill.

Our non-island stops over the last few weeks included Charleston and Savannah. We’d seen both of these cities in previous years, but their charms made another visit well worth while. In Charleston we happened to catch a festive Christmas parade; in Savannah it was fun to drive around the city’s many small squares. These little parks interrupt/intercept the street every block or two, so you have to zigzag around them. Each square has its own character, some with fountains or statues, most with benches or gazebos.

We next “rested” in St. Marys, Georgia for a week, with a minimum of sightseeing planned. We got to know some of the snowbirds at our campground, joined them for a potluck dinner one night, and a game of  “3-13“, a version of rummy, on another night. These experiences were a nice change of routine for us, as we seldom are anywhere long enough to get to know our RV neighbors.

One exception to the down-time mode in St. Marys was a trip to the huge Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour west of St. Marys. The refuge may more accurately be called a swamp, but for me, that was good news -!- lots of beautiful marshland. There is a meandering three-quarter mile boardwalk trail through the bog, ending at an observation tower from which we could see more of the “open prairie” swamp. While it was too cold for the alligators to be out, we enjoyed the amazing variety of birds, plants and trees. Speaking of cold, we’ve been in the midst of a cold spell for several weeks, wearing our heaviest coats. Not happy about that…our goal had been to avoid cold weather while down in the southern states!

This update is written from St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565 by the Spanish, making it America’s oldest continuously occupied (European) town. St. Augustine capitalizes heavily on that fact….tourist trolleys are a constant presence on the downtown streets, along with a gazillion average souvenir and gift shops. There are also many historic buildings, including Castillo de San Marcos. This late 1600s Spanish fortress was built of blocks of coquina, sedimentary stone made of shells and coral. The seashells can easily be seen when you get up close to the fort’s walls.

Another iconic architectural feature in St. Augustine is Flagler College, formerly the Ponce de Leon Hotel. It’s a Spanish Renaissance extravaganza - with a tiled roof, towers, arches, flags, fountains and courtyards. It was built in the late 1800s by Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil.

We’ll be in St. Augustine for a total of two weeks over Christmas and the New Year, so we’ll be doing more exploring here…in the meantime, we send wishes to all of you for a happy holiday season.
 
         Love from us both,
            Patty

Mia Dances With The Dragon

Leaving Smoky Mountain National Park on a perfect autumn day was a special treat, driving through the colorful hills and winding roads leading away from the park, a fitting farewell for our visit. Heading south towards Georgia, we took the scenic Foothills Parkway around the southwestern perimeter of the park, which placed us onto Tennessee Rt 129, the legendary “Tail of the Dragon”, one of the most famous driver’s roads in America. Could this be a coincidence, an omen, a sign that Mia (or rather her driver) should test her (his) mettle on this famous road course?

The legend says 318 turns in 11 miles, with accompanying dips and undulations that have thrown hundreds of motorcycles, sports cars and unprepared truckers off into the woods, often adding to the tally of road fatalities rivaling the famed Nurburgring Nordschliefe in Germany. While it would have been more enjoyable to challenge this monster in a BMW M3 or a Ferrari 512TR, Mia proved herself up to the task. And while her steering linkage got quite a workout, never did she falter, except perhaps to let faster traffic by. We even got a few thumbs-up from motorcyclists, perhaps because we didn’t punt them into the woods as we drifted through the many esses that made up the tail. It was a highlight of the trip, for sure.

Continuing on through the deep woods, we detoured to Fontana Dam in North Carolina, parking near the trail shelter where I first reunited with Patty on my Appalachian Trail thruhike in 2005. One of the nicer shelters on the AT, it is affectionately known as the Fontana Hilton because it has running water and spectacular views of the lake. We picnicked just outside the shelter and even encountered a couple of southbound thruhikers who were straggling to Springer Mountain in Georgia, the opposite direction of my northbound route. The memories from my hike are still vivid, although I think the discomfort I experienced fades from that memory. I was glad not to be on the trail, but to be able to enjoy the comforts of living in Mia, The Dragon Slayer.

 

We continued our way through the sparkling, northern Georgia countryside to visit with several friends about an hour north of Atlanta. Mia has become quite adept at squeezing herself into the driveways of the many friends and family we’ve visited along the route, although she seems just as content curbside in front of homes, so long as she feels welcome. We generally stay inside her when we’re visiting, so as not to disrupt our routine and wear out our welcome wherever we land. It’s easier than packing and unpacking, and while it would provide a break from our routine to stay indoors, in the end it makes it easier for all involved. We traveled into Atlanta for one day to see the Capitol building, the funky Underground Atlanta area (a sunken streetscape near the former train depot, housing stores and restaurants) and Stone Mountain Park, site of the bas relief stone sculpture of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, carved to honor the Confederacy. We learned of this unusual sculpture when visiting Mount Rushmore, as it was begun by the same sculptor Gutzon Borglum (an egotistical, eccentric character), and then stalled when he quit in anger. It was finished by two different sculptors over the next forty years, and while not as compelling as Rushmore, it certainly has a much more colorful history.

Heading back into North Carolina, we visited with Patty’s sister Susie for a week, caught up with laundry and did some needed Mia maintenance. Enjoying a more leisurely pace while there, we had time to begin our Christmas shopping. We also took several hikes in nearby parks and through beautiful farm countryside, including a day trip back to South Carolina to tour the nearby BMW automobile plant in Spartanburg. We’ve toured several automotive manufacturing plants over the years, including Porsche in Germany, but were amazed at the amount of automation that occurs nowadays, and how many robots are used in the manufacturing, painting and assembly process. It’s a fascinating process and explains why the quality of vehicle manufacturing has increased so steadily in recent years.

Moving east through North Carolina, we checked off another Capitol in Raleigh (#31) along with the North Carolina State Museum, which chronicled the cultural and economic history of the state, emphasizing the development of the furniture industry. We arrived in Wilmington to spend Thanksgiving with Patty’s brother Brucie and besides gorging ourselves on the traditional turkey dinner, enjoyed seeing nearby Wrightsville and Topsail Beaches. Both are perfect places to walk off some of the Thanksgiving calories and enjoy some beautiful, un-crowded sandy beaches in the off-season. We continued down the North Carolina coast to visit friends in Southport, a charming village near the water and then made our way back into South Carolina yet again, this time drawn by the beacon of “South of the Border”, the famous roadside mecca. 

Columbia, South Carolina was our target destination, so that we could add #32 to our growing collection of state capitals, and this one did not disappoint. While perhaps not as grand looking from the outside as some, lacking a gilded dome and the white marble or sandstone that many capitols have, the interior was unusual and elegant in a stately, southern way. We still struggle with the requisite war memorials with Confederate flags that fly in the former confederate states, but I guess it’s a problem we’re going to have to live with, as they don’t seem to be interested in changing them (especially in the event the South rises again). Leaving the capitol, we headed to nearby Congaree National Park, which features a floodplain forest with swampland, cypress trees and old-growth hardwood trees, one of the few remaining in the country. We enjoyed a two-mile walk along a boardwalk path through the swampland and forest, an easy way to experience the serenity and beauty of this unique landscape (Cypress knees growing upward like cave stalagmites) unlike anything we’ve encountered on the trip. It was an unexpected surprise to us both and a nice addition to our collection of National Parks. 

On to Charleston and the Georgia coast. We’re getting some pretty cold weather right now and are hoping it will warm up a little as we get further south.  Happy Trails!     Bob