Just Another Day in Paradise

Our youngest son is always accusing his dad of being 'Bah, Humbug' at the holidays. I guess you could say that, maybe, he got his wish. We had a different Thanksgiving.

We have been visiting B's brother and family in Tennessee. The four of us decided to go to Apalachicola Bay, Florida, for an extended Thanksgiving weekend. They have a friend staying down here.

So this is the way we spent the day.

George kept telling his wife that where we were staying was very primitive, no TV, outhouse, etc. He made it sound like maybe this is were we would be.

However, this is where our quarters are, on the top floor.

The bay.

Spanish moss.

There were no turkeys in sight, on or off the table, but lots of peacocks. This one was sitting in the tree, just off the balcony, grooming himself. I love the feathers.

There are also lots of these. They are there at the fish cleaning dock.

This area is noted for it's oysters. Here are some of the boats that do the work.

The 'gravel' along the pathway is interesting.

This is it closer up.

In other parts of the country, there are piles of gravel. Here there are piles of oyster shell as high as those gravel piles.

We also drove out to Cape St George. This is the old light house. Yes, of course we went to the beach, ocean side.

When it was all done, we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner.
The restaurants were closed.

This is the group.


We all hope that you had a fun Thanksgiving and remembered just how fortunate we are due to the hardships the early pilgrims and pioneers endured.

Radford, Virginia

We made a stop in Radford, Virginia, on our way south to see B's brother. We stopped here because we wanted to see a niece who is working on her PhD, close to here in Blacksburg.

Since we have been away from the trailer for awhile, we needed to move some of our things back into it. We had picked it up from storage on our way from DC. After a long day of driving, getting lost because our GPS sent us astray making us late meeting up with our niece, we decided to lay over a day.

One of the things that B wanted to do was to get a hair cut. So the next afternoon we went into town and found a barber. We decided to take a drive along the river, the New River, back to the trailer. While we were driving I saw a two story log cabin down in a flat field closer to the river. As we went further down the road we say a sign. On it was written: The Ingles Farm 1747. The cabin was on the farm. We tried to go in to it but the gate was closed.

Now that wouldn't have meant anything to us if it hadn't been for a book, "Follow the River," that my sister gave us to read when we were at her place last spring. It is the story of Mary Ingles who was taken captive, along with two of her sons, her sister-in-law,and another man, by Indians at the start of the French and Indian war. She and another captive escaped in late September and made her way home, over three to four hundred miles.

We knew that we would be close to where she had lived but didn't realize how close we would be. Today, it is hard to imagine that this area was the frontier. It is also hard to imagine what she went through to get up the New River, through its gorge, and back to her home. I'm glad that I live now.