Mary Jo, Katie and Nancy

Mary Jo, Katie and I got together for Mary Jo's birthday.  It's always fun to see your sisters.  They are like rain for my dry soul.  I feel refreshed.

Nancy and I had our 44th Baptismal Anniversary on May 22nd.  We talked for a long time on the phone.  Good memories of the prayers that were answered and our conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It has been a great blessing to us both.

May 14-15 Getting Home

On the 14th we drove to Twin Falls, Idaho.  Uneventful day of driving.  On the 15th we drove home, enjoying the Columbia River Gorge and the beautiful scenery here.  Brandon was home to greet us.  We slept like logs in our bed.  It was so good  to be home.  Kelli and Kaleb came over for the weekend.  Kelli came to my Sunday School class and made some friends.

May 13th On Our Way Home

Well it's been 6 weeks, and we will drive for 3 days straight home.  Today we drove to North Platte, Nebraska again.  We have been so blessed with good weather.  There have been storms in the states above and below us, but we have been just fine.

May 6-12 At Alice's Place Again

In all honesty, I arrived at Alice's wishing I was on my way home instead.  I did my best, but the days dragged on.  I love Alice and tried to keep her company, but she doesn't converse.  She never was one to talk much, and now that she doesn't hear well, she doesn't care to.  She never wanted to do much, and now she doesn't want to do anything.  She finds no pleasure in anything.  I suspect that has been going on for her whole life.  She has had only one good friend her whole life, and she passed away in 2003.  Anyway, I did my best, and cleaned what I could, read what I could, etc.  I would have liked to do more for Alice, but she won't let anyone do anything.  

So now for my sad story.  I had the worst Mother's Day ever.  My children were great and they all called me, it wasn't that.  It was the fact that I was far away from them and all alone.  I sat in the sitting room at Alice's after we came home from church and I had fixed them something to eat.  Alice sat in her spot and Jerry sat next to her.  I sat in a chair and Alice did nothing between naps and Jerry ignored me and read a book the entire day. We sat there for hours, together, but alone.   He gave me the patronizing "Happy Mothers's Day" and then proceeded to ignore me all day.  It was sad.

However,  I made it through the days, looking for the bright spots in life.

I missed being able to see Willard, he was always a bright spot.

We spent 6 days and nights there and it felt like forever.  It is hard when your heart is to full of love and things you want to share and the people you are with are absent, physically and mentally.  It is hard when you see needs that should be filled, and the people you are with don't want it.  All in all, it was a very unhealthy 6 days.  I should have skipped out and gone to the movies in Springfield all by myself.  :D

May 1-5 Spring Hill, Tennessee and Grant's Family

The best thing in life is to visit your grown son and his family, seeing the brand-new granddaughter, and playing with the older one.  Josie has grown and changed so much and she is a beautiful girl in every way.  I love them so much, and we had a very good time with them all.

We didn't get any pictures of Eleanor in her blessing dress.  We did get some of Josie all dolled up for the occasion.

Josie had her kindergarten graduation while we were there.  It was very good, with her giving a speech and showing off her learned skills, like reading us an entire book.  Very fun.  Jeanne and Gary were there, too. Mindy (and Grant) have done a great job of home-schooling Josie.

Jerry went golfing for the first time in his life and he did pretty well.  Grant says he is a natural.

We enjoyed our time there and miss them all very much.

April 30th Still Enjoying the Great Smokey Mountains

Today is the 1 year anniversary of Jerry's retirement.  He is loving it.  Today we just drove between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.  We went to the Christmas Store in Pigeon Forge where I saw more Christmas ornaments in one place than I had ever seen in my life.  It really is the best one.  When we drove back to Gatlinburg, we walked around town and ate lunch at Bubba Gump's again.    We are relaxing and getting ready to drive to Spring Hill, Tennessee tomorrow to be at Grant and Mindy's place.

Dollywood Coal-Powered Train

The highlight of our trip to Dollywood, for Jerry, was getting to ride on a real coal-fired train.  He told me today he is still thinking about it.

Noah "Bud" Ogle Place and Gatlinburg

We took a hike in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park today, just outside of Gatlinburg.   It was around the Ogle Place, an old cabin, barn and mill, that belonged to the Ogle family in the 1800s.  I didn't know until I came to this area how many rhododendrons and azaleas grow wild.  They are everywhere and some are very big, like trees.

The cabin.

                                               



The spring that went to the house in a wooden flume.

Stones on the trail.

                                                 

The mill on the stream.

Dollywood and Great Smokey Mountain National Park

Yesterday was spent at Dollywood. We saw all 5 shows they had that day, that being the main thing Jerry wanted to do. It was sunny, but cooler. and he wasn't keen on most of the rides. We don't do thrill rides anymore, and he didn't want to get splashed

. We enjoyed seeing Dolly's museum, which holds so much memorabilia. It is obvious that she is a real artist, inspired by everything around her as she grew up. They insist you start the museum tour upstairs, which is all about what it was like to grow up here in the hills, and how it shaped her faith in God and helped her develop her talent.  If you have heard her song, "Coat of Many Colors", the little coat is there.  The message of that song has always moved me: hold your head up, love is important, faith in God is important.   I like the way she has paid tribute to all those who have loved her and helped her become the person she is.  The museum is full of areas that pay tribute to others.

   When you go downstairs, it is Dolly's career.  It is full of costumes, shoes, gowns, photos  and other things that make up her career.  It is beautiful.  It was fun to see the Grammys, CMA Awards, and many, many other awards in a case there.  Her Gold records, etc. are also there.  






I was amazed at her career span, how much she has done and all of the people she rubbed shoulders with.  Mainly I was impressed with her great love for everything and everyone.

It is obvious that she has done  a lot for Country Music as well as the area here where she grew up. 






Today we spent a little time in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.
Tomorrow we will see more on our way to Gatlinburg.

Seeing the Cumberland Gap

We drove from Wytheville over and up towards Cumberland Gap to see the country where so many people migrated into Kentucky and the westward.  It was very pretty.  We went to church before we left in Marion, Virginia.  Everyone was very friendly.  

Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia (Yesterday)

We left Mocksville, NC and drove north to the Blue Ridge Parkway and got on it just over the Virginia Border.  We drove eastward on it, and northward since it pretty much just winds back and forth through the hills.  It is very beautiful country.  When we got off the parkway and drove the backroads, we saw pretty farms, all so well kept.  The dogwoods are blooming and the azaleas, so there was color everywhere.  We can't wait to explore more of this area tomorrow.

Blue Ridge Parkway and Wytheville

First thing this morning we drove to the Booker T. Washington National Park.  The site of where he was born and freed is lovely, but the information there is disappointing.  The outdoor site is very nice, and shows a little bit of how they lived and farmed there.  The visitor's center tells a little bit about the man, but not much about what he did or said.  He did so much more than they show there.

We decided to see more of the area today and we drove to the Blue Ridge Parkway again, traveling westward back towards Rocky Knob.  It was raining all morning until about 1:30 in the afternoon.  It was still lovely and the closer we got to West Virginia the more Red Bud trees we saw.  We should have taken a picture of those.  We stopped in Blacksburg for lunch and ended up at 5 Guys Burgers and Fries.  Tonight we eat salad and other vegetables.  It was good, though, and we two older people had fun with the soda machine that lets you mix flavors.  Now we are stopped in Wytheville, Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the night.

Fort Bragg North Carolina

We left Myrtle Beach and headed inland and northwest to Fort Bragg, North Carolina where we saw the 82nd Airborne Division Museum and Memorial.  No pictures, but it was really moving.  I learned that they are a GRF (Global Response Force) and are ready to go anywhere in the world in 18 hours.  Not only have they defended our country in the World Wars and other global conflict, but they also responded to emergencies like Hurricane Andrew in the 1990s and the earthquake in Haiti, just to name a few.  On 9/11 they went in to help, too.

 It was an experience getting onto the base to see the museum.  Kind of like the DMV, take a number and wait, fill out a form and show your ID and Vehicle information.  The exception was that every so often a security officer would come into the room and ask if anyone needed to register their firearms. That would be a no from us.  We ate at a food court on base with some of America's finest.

We drove on through little towns, and some bigger ones.  We went through the Sandhill area, where there is a ridge of ancient beach sand from an ancient ocean.  Everything was neat, tidy and picturesque.

We are now resting for the night at Mocksville, North Carolina.  We need to decide exactly where we are going tomorrow.  We think up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We have 3 days until we need to be in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and it is fun to just see where each day leads us until then.

Boardwalk and Good Vibrations

We are really enjoying relaxing here in Myrtle Beach!  The weather is perfect and the beach is beautiful.  We haven't spent a lot of time on the beach, though we have walked on it.  We have walked the entire boardwalk, it's only about 5 blocks long.  We ate a Beachside Bar and Grill and enjoyed the view.  We walked the boardwalk and stopped at the oldest gift and curio shop called The Gay Dolphin.  It is crammed full of stuff.  Hard to describe, but you can find everything from shells to pirate decor to fairies to beach decor, and on and on.  Jewelry, too and an entire section of dollar store imports.  We didn't bother to look at that, we just wanted to enjoy the ambiance anyway.  There was a back scratcher made from a dowel with a real alligator paw attached and preserved.  Can we say gross?  It was.  Steve Irwin would roll over in his grave.

I got Jerry to don his bathing suit after he rested a little and go to the pool.  I sprayed his lily-white body well and we warmed ourselves up a little and then I got him to go into the Lazy River.  He was just going along because I wanted to.  He is a 12-year-old at heart.  He enjoyed it and spent a lot of time making me go faster, or holding me back and finding the best way to "engineer" the inner-tube.  If it weren't for the fact we had to limit our sun exposure to one hour, we would have stayed longer.  We are on the way to finding out how to have fun and relax.

Harbor Lights and Myrtle Beach

Today we slept in (7:15) and we just relaxed until about 9:30 and then went for a drive down Ocean Drive in Myrtle Beach.  We got out of the car about 30th avenue and went onto the beach.  It was beautiful there, about 75 degrees and a slight cool breeze.  We spread out our towels and spent a little time on the beach.  We walked and found a few shells.  A friendly El Salvadoran woman named Marta talked to us and gave me two shells.  She was very sweet.  

We cruised Ocean Drive both ways and then bought tickets for two shows at The Carolina Opry for tonight and tomorrow night.  Then we went back to our nice place at Harbor Lights.  Jerry was tired and napped.  I went to the pool and enjoyed the sun for awhile.

The Carolina Opry was very good.  Everyone was so talented.  What I thought would be a 2 hour show was a 2 1/2 hour show.  It flew by.  There were different genres covered and a group of cloggers called All That were a part of the show, too.  Tomorrow we go see Good Vibrations, songs of the 60s, 70s & 80s.  We are retired, and enjoy it.  It is embarrassing though when everyone around you is also gray haired and they won't even clap or laugh or smile. Like an almost dead audience.  It got better by the end of the show, though.  The younger people were all behind us and more lively.

  

 

April 20 Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant, South Caroline

We checked out of our hotel and headed just outside of Charleston to the Boone Hall Plantation in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.  It is a beautiful, grand old home.  It is privately owned and the two upper floors are for the owners, so we only saw the downstairs.  The recreated history there is one of the best in the area.  We heard the entire history of the home, it's owners, what happened there, what was grown there, and the slaves.  The house there was built in 1935, being the 4th home on the property. The first home burned.  The second one was destroyed by a hurricane.  The third was not cared for enough, so that it was in very bad shape when the one who build the 4th home bought it.  He was a retired diplomat and needed a nicer place.  He had the 3rd home dismantled and repurposed some of the thing from inside.  The people who own it now, are the children of a couple who were peach farmers who bought it and made it what it is today.  Her mother's antique collection is throughout the house:  some of the most beautiful pieces I've seen.

We learned about slave life, and we listened to a woman teach about the Gullah-geechee way of communication and about their lives.  Gullah was the way they said "gola", which is short for Angola.  Geechee meant one who works on a large rice plantation.  She said years ago if you called someone a geechee it was an insult, but now it is part of their heritage and they are proud of it.  She demonstrated their way of speaking and singing.  "Cum by ya" is really from them and does mean Come By Here.  The "th" sound is overemphasized, makeing if the "d" sound.  Like "dere" for "there".  Now that I know that I will never look at that language the same. A song like, "Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home" might have been sung as a message that the underground railroad was coming through there because "home" was the code word for "freedom".

 The Gullah came from the West African nations and were particularly snagged for slavery because of the knowledge of rice growing.  The people who had these plantations and owned slaves were very, very wealthy.  In today's money it would cost you $48,000 to buy a 21-year-old male slave.  It boggles the mind.  Their plantations, crops and everything that was made would not have been possible without the slaves, which is why they were so against freedom for the slaves.

I understand the Civil War better now and what happened and why it happened.  I was impressed by the people of all colors coming to see the plantation together and enjoying one another's company.

The pictures are the Avenue of Oaks, House from the Gardens, Jerry and and oak by the river, the view from the front door, a slave tag found on the property, one of the slave cabins made from the bricks the slaves made that were considered unfit to sell, the house now, inside wall of one of the slave cabins.  All bricks were made by he slaves.

April 19 Church and Charlotte

We went to church, but only Sacrament meeting.  That was my doing.  We were going to be short on time here in Charlotte.  We went to the Harbor Tour, which was very beautiful and the best part was seeing all the Atlantic Bottle-nosed Dolphins in the water, as they approached the ship.  I even saw one with a calf.  Amazing!!   After the tour we walked over to the Ft. Sumter visitor's center and viewed the  Civil War exhibits.  Then we went to where the carriage rides start and took that 1 hour tour.  It was a comfortable carriage with 4 bench seats.  Ours was pulled by two mules, a white one named  Libby and a brown one named Aladdin.  Our tour guide, Marshall, was very interesting,  Charleston is a beautiful city, full of history.  On place, White Garden, looks like an ordinary park.  It used to be the waterfront before the land was expanded by men by about 3 blocks.  It was a pile of oyster shells, so it was bleached white in the sun. Near it was pluff mud, which I  guess is soft and sticky.  Many pirates were hung there, left there for a week hanging.  Then they would throw their bodies in the mud so they couldn't be part of the sea or the land.  Their bodies would sink into the mud.  So when they made the man-made land and covered that over they made the park.  They figure there are hundreds of pirate's bones under it.   After the carriage ride we drove around to see some of it again and the parked and walked through the market.

April 18th Onward to Charlotte, South Carolina

We left Jacksonville, Florida and drove to Charleston, South Carolina.  We drove to the Visitor's Center in the middle of downtown and learned a little bit about the city.  We bought tickets for a harbor tour on a boat and a horse-drawn carriage ride through the city for tomorrow.  Then we got on the trolleys that go through town and rode the green line.  We got off at the waterfront and walked around.  Jerry was fascinated by the container ship out in the water. He was also interested in the sailboat races going on.   I felt impressed to buy a Palmetto Rose from a young man who was making them on the pier to pay for his basketball playing at school. At the French restaurant, they served me too much fish!  I ate 1/3 of it.   We finally got tired and went to the motel in Goose Creek about 15 miles away.

April 16th - 17th Jacksonville

We left Florida City and drove to Jacksonville, Florida.  It took over 6 hours.  We settled into our motel and went to dinner.  We came back and planned the next day.

The next day we went to the Timucuan Preserve, a large area, mostly in the water.  We learned about the natives there and their lives.  We saw some things that were the oldest relics from the area.  Like and Owl Totem and hollowed out log for a boat.

Then we went to the Kingsley Plantation.  It has the original house.  We learned about the wealthy families, Carolina Gold (rice), and slaves.  The slave homes were made of "tabby" a cement made with shells, etc.  The ruins were there, the only tabby ruins anywhere.  The drive in was lush.  We saw a Peacock on the side of the road down another road we took.