Rock Hill, S.C. & Pineville, N.C.

Today we drove from Savannah, Georgia through South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina. Well really, Pineville is where our Comfort Inn is. We picked up two caches in South Carolina, and that's our 19th State.

2/2/2008 You found Life is Just a Bowlful of Magnetic Cherries (Traditional Cache)
What a fantastic park! The folks here are very lucky. We celebrated our 50th anniversary last June and had a coin created to commemorate the event. We set as a goal to find a cache in each of the 83 counties in Michigan and to launch one of our coins in each one.
Once that task was accomplished, we decided that our next quest is to find a cache and launch a coin in each of the 50 states. South Carolina is number 19 and this is the cache we selected.
Signed the log, traded our coin for a TB from Michigan, and left a geo patch.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to start our coin off in such a beautiful park.

We stopped for lunch in Rock Hill, South Carolina. They had a nice restaurant called Susie's (how could we resist?) But the most impressive thing that we saw in Rock Hill was Cherry Park. It's an amazing place - a perfectly wonderful, beautiful, clean and shiny park. They have 6 baseball and softball fields arranged in a huge circle. At the center of the circle is a 3 story press box kind of a building shaped like a hexagon with one side for each field. It's quite a deal.
The hiking path was an asphalt boulevard, with one side for walkers, and the other side for bikes and dogs. At the entrance is an impressive statue of Casey at the Bat - he has Mudville written on the back of his shirt. We were everlastingly impressed with this nice park. We liked what we saw of Rock Hill.

We leave South Carolina with the above tribute to the University of South Carolina Gamecocks (!!!)

The battery has died on Dick's Lenovo laptop, and so after we checked into our Pineville Comfort Inn we valiantly tried to work on it. We finally were able to remove the battery from the laptop, so that's at least Step 1 accomplished. We decided to stay here in Charlotte for two nights - tomorrow we want to do some sightseeing in Charlotte, and some geocaching also. We're planning to watch the Super Bowl at The Hickory Tavern.

In Which We leave Florida

We stayed with Laurie and Chip last night. Chip made us great pancakes and bacon this morning and then it was farewell to Saint Creek Drive and Hammock Creek. Dick took these pictures for me - I love the landscaping around the entrance and the gatehouse.



Bye Bye Hammock Creek. It's been great!

We hit I-95 and headed for Savannah. Tonight we're just south of Savannah in Richmond Hill, Georgia. It was a very pleasant travel day, and a lovely Comfort Inn. We ate at Beef O'Brady's, a sports bar (my new favorite venue)! It was comfortable and fun. Beef's is a strong supporter of local athletics, both athletes and coaches. We liked Richmond Hill. The sign said it's a Henry Ford City (?).
These El Cheapo gas stations are all over this area. The cheapest we've seen so far is $2.75.

The Character Cafe

Since Dylan is the Pillar of Patience this month for the PCE character construction project, we all went to lunch at school in his honor. We chose Grandpa to sit on the stage with MisterD, but the PTA ladies said that we could all sit with them and also that we could each have a cup of ice cream!
Things don't get any better than this! We are very proud of Dylan, and he was really happy to have us there. It was a Good Thing.

Dick took this picture just for Sharon. This Lincoln Navigator was parked outside of Dylan's school as we left the building!

We met the realtor at our house in Summerfield so she could do a walk through and make sure that we hadn't done any damage! We turned in our keys and remotes and waved goodbye to Warwick Lane.

I chose to eat our last Florida dinner at Duffy's, which is a sports bar. It's a totally comfortable place and exactly matches my level of sophistication! I had a great time.

Early Release

Dylan got out of school at noon today, so we all piled into the car and drove up to Ft. Pierce to visit the St. Lucie County Historical Museum and the Marine Center. The Museum and Gardner House were the most enjoyable to me. We all really enjoyed the Florida Cowboy exhibit. Those men were called Crackers! I think that's surprising. It wasn't until after WWII that the open range was fenced in and cows were prevented from blocking traffic. The museum also has a very nice display of Seminole life and customs - the actual photographs are stunning to see.
Dylan had a chance to try his hand at printing.


Here's our own Florida Cracker boy!

Favorite fish from the Marine Center.
We had dinner at Norris's Famous for Ribs - It was wonderful!

27 Dresses

Laurie and I went to the movies, and because we were feeling lighthearted we decided to see something fun. 27 Dresses is definitely fun! It was cute, enjoyable, lighthearted and worth it. We both liked it a lot.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Dick, Chip and Dylan got in some street time!

Today Dylan brought home a great report card and an award for being this month's Pillar of Patience (snort!)
We are all very proud of Mister D.

The Lost Day

I'm feeling much better now.

Lookie-Loo

There's a new development opening in Laurie's neighborhood, called Canopy Creek. She has always loved to look at model homes, so that was our quest for today! Here I am calling Laurie from Applebee's to set up our quest. These are remarkable, high-end homes. I really couldn't believe the backyard pools - very spectacular!
Dylan really enjoyed exploring the pools their associated rock formations!
We were in awe of this beautiful house and its great floorplan!
This house had 5 bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms. The space where I'm standing is a playroom/gameroom - a huge space with every amenity you can thing of - big screen TV, lovely sitting area, game table, foosball, and on and on. One home had a kitchen with a double built-in refrigerator/freezer, and two dishwashers! I've led a very sheltered life!

Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki

Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki means "a place of learning, a place to remember" in the Seminole language. The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum is a wonderful place 13 miles north of Alligator Alley, which means it is literally out in the middle of nowhere! We drove down there today to learn something about Florida Native Americans. It's a terrific museum with lifesize mannikins displaying Seminole life.

My favorite parts were the very well done slide presentation, done in panorama style, and the beautiful and unique items of clothing which were displayed everywhere.
Dylan's favorites were the Legend storytelling and the mile and a half nature walk.

For some unknown reason we were unable to find the tribal restaurant...so we drove back out to Alligator Alley and got a surprisingly good BLT at the gas station there, and Dylan got two corn dogs - he said they were much better than the school corndogs!
Dick took this picture of Dylan and me unwrapping our ice cream - Dick thought it would be a nice contrast to the previous picture of TooJay's! I must repeat, however, that this little gas station had a really really good BLT sandwich!

We stopped at Quiet Waters Park on the way home so that Dick could put a travel bug in a cache. Dylan was delighted by these nesting birds - mostly ibis and egret:

School Lunch

Laurie, Dick and I got sub sandwiches and went over to PCE to have lunch with Dylan! He was surprised! We also saw Kyle and Jessica over there. If you bring in food from outside, you eat at a picnic table in the courtyard. It was a lovely day, the sandwiches were yummy, Dylan was fun, and we were all glad that we did that!

After eating, we went to look at Dylan's classroom. I was so impressed - it was a big, square, light, airy, spacious room with lots of windows and only 18 desks (!!). Mrs. Oset has enrichment materials posted all around the room - I thought that it was very well done - a warm, inviting, enriching place for kids. Dylan is a lucky duck.

The rest of the day was spent running errands, watching TV, reading, eating at Too Jay's, working on my blog (which Dylan calls my blah blah blah), questing on WOW, and just generally hanging out. We stayed at Laurie's until 10 p.m.

We also Love Lake Placid !

If you're ever in West Central Florida, you MUST visit the charming town of Lake Placid! It's a small town that has everything. It's full of parks and pleasantries and especially murals! These murals adorn 42 different downtown buildings, and they are spectacular. The murals are very well done - captivating and unbelievable. One of them, the cattle drive mural, has its own sounds effects - the sounds of a round-up. There are so many awesome murals you really should click on the site above and see some of them. Some are done in trompe l'oeil fashion - a truck with a real bumper and real license plate for example.

In addition to the wonderful murals, there are also various waste receptacle containers which you have never seen the likes of scattered around the parks. Our favorite was the car - when you push in the driver's side window to deposit your trash, the car lights go on, the horn honks, and the engine starts!

We had lunch at Jaxson's, just as Capt. Bud suggested, and we enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks Don!

This was a most successful overnighter. We found 16 caches yesterday, 21 today, and only received minor nicks and scratches, and 4 fire ant bites. Hooray! HomeAwayFromHomeward Bound.

We Love Sebring!

On the advice of our friend Don (Capt. Bud), we decided to spend a couple of days west and north of Okeechobee caching, exploring and riding around. We had such a good time!
Sebring is a delightful small town with scenic lakes and nice shopping areas.
When this was built, it was a pier out over the water. Now, not so much.
On the way to Sebring, we stopped to do some caching at Lake Okeechobee. The Big Lake is down to about 10 feet deep over all due to the recent drought. Dick tried his delayed picture-taking on his new Nikon, and it worked well !
One of the caches that Dick found today was guarded by the biggest spider we ever want to see !
This was a magnificent tree by the Sebring Burger King. Could this possibly be a guava tree?
Cachers are So Clever! We got a kick out of the name of this one - "Get the F Out of Florida".
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Unfortunately, Lake Jackson is drying up also, just like Lake Okeechobee. The pontoon boat is high and dry, and the No Mooring sign seems a bit redundant! OK, so it's obvious that we're not in Michigan anymore!
This sign fascinated me! Please notice that in the English version "Cresent" is spelled incorrectly, but in the Spanish version, "Crescent" is spelled correctly. What could possibly be the reason for that??

We found 16 caches today!

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express - really nice. I love their new linens - great pillows, towels, sheets and such.

On our way out of town the next morning, here's what we saw in the parking lot at Mac Land - try that at Chum's Corner!