Retirement is not for sissies!

For those of you who think I'm laying around in the sun drinking little umbrella drinks, I'm about to burst your bubble. 

It seems that this week I'm in the picnic table business.  ALL of the camps picnic tables need to be washed with a bleach solution, wire brushed for loose paint, wiped down, and then painted.  And this is one of the not too bad ones.  I managed to complete 6 tables yesterday afternoon before collapsing in my rig.  Last night was a Tylenol PM night for sure (but one of those umbrella drinks would have been a welcome addition).  This morning I got 6 more done before lunch and hope to get another 6 done after.  It's not hard work but it is hard on your back bending over to scrub and wire brush.  The tables out front in the hot sun all day were very bad.  And they were just painted last spring!  Oh well, job security I guess.

Tequilla, the owners' cat inspected my work and so far seems to be OK with what I've done.

Besides, I had a great weekend in North Georgia.  Brother Mike and I watched 2 John Wayne/Patricia Neal movies.  Sister Linda made a great pot of chili for supper.  I got to visit with nephew Clay and his girlfriend Maggie and see Clay's house which of course Maggie is helping him clean up and update.  Way to go Maggie!

On the way to Mike's I made a few stops.  First in Blackshear, GA to meet up with a group of southern Georgia cachers and talk about solving puzzles.  Very informative and I wish I could have stayed there longer to learn more, but Mike was expecting me.  I did stop at the Veterans Park in town and saw this interesting marker.

Guess the PC police haven't made it down here yet. 

The next town of note was Alma, GA where I narrowly excaped an attack helicopter.

Actually this was part of a very impressive Veterans Memorial Plaza which was surprisingly large for such a small town.  I like that.

Finally we stopped at the Chamber of Commerce in Hazelhurst to find a cache for Jeff Davis County.

I just like the fact that there is a Jeff Davis County.  Kinda cool that the PC police haven't made them change the name.

Finally I did get to Mike and Linda's just before dark.  We visited a while then after the movie I headed for bed.  I had to get up early the next morning to drive about an hour away to Suches, GA for a little digging in a family cemetery.  Not mine, the Seabolt family. 

He wasn't a Seabolt either, I just thought this was a cool grave and marker.  I especially liked the solar tulips.  But back to business.

 I was at the Zion Baptist Church Cemetery taking pictures of Seabolt graves as a birthday present to Jennifer Seabolt Johns, you know, mother of Aiden, Addy, and Drake.  It seems that her family line traces back to the Cherokee in this part of Georgia and to a woman named Ah Le Cie who married a Seabolt and even changed her name to Sarah Elizabeth.  I was fortunate enough to find a local Cherokee historian who is also a descendant of Ah Le Cie who met me at the cemetery and then later led me on a hike in the woods nearby to the Cherokee burial site of the parents and grandparents of Ah Le Cie.  Pretty cool, huh?  I really enjoyed my afternoon with the Seabolts.

Actually this is a deer in Texas but I was assured that there are a lot of deer in the woods we were roaming, as well as bear!

The next day I had to say good-bye to big brother and start the drive back to camp.  It is about a 5-6 hour drive so I don't get to visit as often as I would like.  And that's if you take the most direct route and don't stop to geocache.  The most direct route is 441 but this time we went home down 17 and then US 1 also known as Jeff Davis Highway.  Yes, I'm in Dixie folks, and I love it.

Just another week in paradise

Site 12: Home, sweet home.  Mornings before work Gus and I sit outside and watch the sparrows, cardinals, and woodpeckers at the feeders around the pond.  Evenings we repeat.  Tough life, huh?

Some days we have company.  This guy was on the porch of cabin I.  He must have gotten in while we had all the screens down.  We took him down to the pond and released him there.  See ya later, Ralph.

On Sunday morning we drove up to Fort McAllister State Park and did some hiking and geocaching.  Didn't know till we got there that we'd find a Nashville connection.  Lots of good trails here plus we did the walking tour of the fort which reminded me of Ft. Negley with fewer stops.  Took me 3 trips to complete that tour/cache but this tour/cache just took an hour and one trip.  Yeah!!

After lunch we drove over to Skidaway Island, which is no longer an island, to walk the birdwatcher's trail and hunt another geocache.  We spent all afternoon at this beautiful park.  Loved all the sandy trails and Spanish moss.  I think that stuff is like kudzu so I'm not standing still long enough for it to grow on me!

We left Skidaway and headed back toward home driving along the Coastal Highway (US 17) and got to Brunswick just before sunset.  This is what's left of the old Liberty Shipyards where they built Liberty ships during WWII.  My father served on some of those ships but don't know if his ship was built here.  Will have to look into that.  And yes, we found the cache that was hidden here.  But if there hadn't been a cache here we never would have known to come here and learn this history.  Another reason I love to cache.

So as we crossed the Brunswick River on the new Sidney Lanier Bridge at sunset and headed home I thought a lot about Daddy and how much he would enjoy this area.  Lots of places to fish!!  Of course he would have already been catching those big catfish in the pond at our camp.  We are just happy to feed them bread crumbs.

Back to work!  This week we are working on clearing the hiking trails at the back of the campgrounds.  Lots of Confederate Jessamine which is just starting to bloom.  Unfortunately it is also choking some of the trees so it is sometimes cut away to save the trees.  Whew!  We all earned our keep on this project and we're only a quarter of the way through it. 

So that's my week in a nutshell.  Well, I did drive to Lake City on Monday and had my appointment at the Women's Clinic (nothing here to talk about).  I will return on 2/10 for a pulmonary functions test to see if we can figure out why I keep getting bronchitis lately.  More on that next post.  Bye for now.  Stay safe or have fun.  Both if you can.

Vickie