Daily Archives: June 13, 2009
Mermaids and Blue Jays…
Today was our day to drive over to Beaufort, SC where we lived in 1969-1970 when I worked for the Department of Defense at the Marine Corp Air Station there. We were here for almost a year.
We were able to find the two houses where we lived while we were there. One of them looks great, but the other one looks a little more rundown.
Of course it was 39 years ago, so I guess it was to be expected.
Here is the first house we lived in, a two story duplex.
Our First House in Beaufort
We only lived here a few months.
This is the other house.
Our second house in Beaufort
At first we weren’t sure if this house was the right one. When were there, the room on the right with the double doors was a carport. Plus we were looking for a large oak tree to the right of the driveway. Then we saw the large stump behind the garbage can and that sealed it.
The tree was significant because when we lived there we had a cat. And the large oak was home to a mother Blue Jay and her chicks.
Whenever Jan would let the cat out the front door, the mother Blue Jay would dive bomb the cat and peck him on the head. It wasn’t long until the cat had a bare spot on the top of his head, and didn’t want to go outside anymore.
Finally, Jan would stand outside with a broom and escort the cat out to the bushes by waving the broom at the Blue Jay. Then she would go out later and escort the cat back in.
We also found that like other cities, Beaufort had erected mascot statues. In their case, it’s a mermaid.
Mermaid 1
Mermaid 2
We also saw horse statues in Kentucky, and these moose mascots in Coeur d’ Alene, ID.
Moose 1
Moose 2
Moose 3
And of course in Seabrook, TX where they have pelicans.
Pelican 1
Pelican 2
Pelican 3
After a delicious lunch at the Magnolia Bakery Cafe, we drove out to the entrance of the Marine Corp Air Station where I used to work.
It looks better. They didn’t have those planes out front when I was there.
MCAS
In driving over to Beaufort we were amazed to find all the very high end subdivisions located on what used to swamp land.
And the previously two lane road is now four lanes.
Coming home we detoured over toward Hilton Head Island to find the nearest Starbucks. The traffic was really heavy heading to the Island, probably for the holiday weekend.
Tomorrow we plan to eat lunch at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. Uncle Bubba is Paula Deen’s brother, and has his own restaurant. I guess it runs in the family.
Afterward we’re going to take the Old Town Trolley Tour of Savannah, just like the ones we took in Key West and St. Augustine.
Later…
Swans a swimming, geese a…walking!
Today was really grueling.
We had to drive a whole 43 miles to our new park in Hardeeville, SC.
But before we headed out, we walked down to the lake near our site to get a closeup look at the swans and geese we had seen from a distance.
Swans a swimming!
Geese a....walking
We left out a little before noon and pulled into our new site about 1pm. It’s in a fairly heavily wooded area with a lot of nice trees and looks like this –
Hardeeville RV Park
And two good things to report: My starter repair from yesterday is still holding up, and the new AC belt I put on about two weeks ago is still working.
After getting everything set up and settling in, we drove over to Savannah, about 10 miles away.
This was our first vist back to Savannah since we lived near here in 1970. One of the places we wanted to revisit was our favorite restaurant here in Savannah, The Pirate’s House, so we decided to have a late lunch there.
The Pirate’s House building has been a pub, a bar, an inn, or a restaurant of some kind, since 1753. Now that’s a lot of history.
The Pirate's House
We got there in time for their lunch buffet, which was just as good as we remembered.
After lunch we drove by Oglethorpe Mall where we used to shop, just to see if it was still there. It was, and it looks great. It also looks like it has been completely rebuilt since we were there, so maybe that’s why it looks great.
After that we headed home. On the way I make a quick stop at a Cummins Diesel dealer that we passed to see if they had a replacemnt plastic coolant overflow tank for my coach. While I was working on my non-starting problem yesterday, I discovered that my coolant overflow tank had a crack in it. No big problem, but I want to get it fixed.
As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say “It’s always something!”
Tomorrow we’re going to drive over to Beaufort, SC where we lived from November 1969 to September 1970 when I worked for the Department of Defense as a contractor at the Marine Corp Air Station.
Old Home Week.
