Working it!

17 Nov 09--Cathy and I have been working at her parent's house, mostly painting, with a few electric box changes thrown in. We hope to paint the whole house before Thanksgiving...time will tell. Cathy's mother is feeding us every day, so I have to keep working so as not to bloat into oblivion.

We take Fluffy and Jabba over to their house every day so we don't have to go back and forth letting them out of the RV. They stay on the back porch, mostly sleeping in their beds, and they seem to be getting usd to it, so, so far so good. The weather has generally been between 75 and 80 the past few days, so I know they are comfortable.

We are having Thanksgiving dinner here at her parent's house, with one of her sisters and her niece joining us. Her uncle might be coming also, but he hasn't said for sure yet. I will definately get pictures so everyone can meet the family.

Veteran's Day

So Julie and Ellen remembered to give us a shout out on Veteran's Day, and we thank them for that!! haha

Just hanging out at Cathy's parent's house the last 2 days, that and going to the dentist. Otherwise just chillin' in the rainy and/or overcast weather. Just saw on Yahoo news that Lou Dobbs resigned from CNN tonight...what is that about...anyone get the scoop?

Tallahassee, Florida!

9 Nov 09--Travelled from St Mary's to Tallahassee today. Didn't see much on the way down, except a few State prisoners working on the side of the road. If you look at the lower left hand corner of the RV picture you can see a guy in orange...that is a representative of a current day chain gang member! haha

We'll be here a month, visiting with Cathy's family and figuring out where we go from here. We hope to come out of here with a plan of attack as to how we will go about seeing the rest of the country....any ideas???

The Jewel of Georgia!

8 Nov 09--Our last day here, and we finally find the crown jewel of this area. Jekyll Island is about 45 minutes north of St Mary's, and it is really nice. It has a little of everything: beaches, golf, horseback riding, hike and bike trails, and even a water park. It even has a little history...haha!

The first person to live here was Major William Horton, a British officer, in 1736. These are the remains of his house.



Jump to 1791, and a French guy named Poulain Du Bignon, fleeing the French Revolution, buys and lives in this same house. He and some of his descendants are buried in this cemetary. By 1800 he owns the whole island.

The French guy's descendants own the island until 1886, when John Du Bignon sells the island to a group called the Jekyll Island Club. And who are they you ask? None other than 53 of the richest men in the country...including JP Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, a Rockefeller, and a Vanderbilt.

These guys all built "cottages" for themselves and their families...here are a couple. This one is the Rockefller place. The porch wraps completely around the entire cottage.

And here is another.

There were more cottages, but I didn't get pictures of them all. But here is what else they built.

They built a "clubhouse", which is a restaurant/hotel/gathering place for themselves and any other guests they have invited. It is huge!

Then they build themselves another complex that is made up of individual apartments...right across the street from Rockefeller's house...this is a place they can go to dinner in their seperate places without having to mix with other people's guests. I guess they really didn't want to stay in their own cottages.



And along with all of this, Jekyll Island is a State Park...so everything is reasonably priced, or even cheap by today's standards. They have an RV park with about 200 sites in it, 3 golf courses that are really nice,

and beautiful beaches. Of course Cathy thought it was cold, but it was about 75 degrees...and the water was certainly a lot warmer than in Maine and NH! I would definately stay here in the RV park for a month...it is beautiful!

Let's Wrap It Up!

6-7 Nov 09--Yesterday we didn't do a whole lot...stayed at the RV, washed and cut the dogs, and went to the gym. Seeing as there isn't a whole lot to do here we figured we should spread it out. haha

So today we went downtown again. First we toured Orange Hall, then went to the Navy Submarine Museum run by the town, and then Cumberland Island/oyster/War of 1812 Museum.

Orange Hall was built in 1829...all 8000 sq ft of it. It has 2 front parlors for guests, and a downstairs for the servants...and unlike almost all houses of that period, it actually had a kitchen built inside the home, downstairs where the servants lived. That is a "dutch oven" on the left of the picture. Patti, you said you were looking for kitchen pictures...this was the 1st kitchen I came to.



This is a wind up record player....and a Tiffany chandelier from the original owners.



This is a great staircase! And it is the original railing on the left!



Upstairs were the bedrooms....look at what appears to be the 1st trundle bed!



And isn't this wheelchair pretty cool!



I hate to say it but the Navy Museum was weak, at best. It was 3 floors of mostly plaques that were donated by different sailors over time. They had a lot of model submarines on display, and a few things like the door to a sub and steering panel, but the rest was sort of boring.



There were only a few things I found interesting...these are pictures of the top of a sub....where the missiles are stored...and I think they said this sub can carry up to 154 nuclear missles! ouch!



This is a picture of the same sub, but this shows where Navy Seals can be carried in a compartment below and then released without the sub surfacing. I thought that was pretty cool.



This is a door between compartments in a sub...it was as small as it looks in the picture. I have seen some pretty hefty sailors in my time, so that door caught my eye!



This was a Congressional Medal of Honor citation for a guy who was a deep sea diver and saved his buddy who was trapped underwater and couldn't get up to the surface because his lines were snagged. And then a picture of a sub surfacing...doesn't it look like a whale shooting out of the water?!



And the most interesting thing of all was this mechanical chair they had for people who needed it to get up the stairs. If you are my age or older you may remember Inger Stevens in the TV show Farmer's Daughter when we were kids. They had one of these for the grandmother, and I always thought it was so cool!



When we left the Museum we were looking for something to eat and stopped in this restaurant to look at the menu....Gator Tail!!! Didn't order it!



Then we went to the Cumberland Island Museum....this is the museum attached to the island we went to the other day, but it shares its space with a small War of 1812 exhibit. I can't remember if I told you that St Mary's has a few claims to fame. They say they are the 2nd city chartered in the US, after St Augustine. Cumberland Island itself is clearly a big claim to fame. And they also claim that the last skirmish of the War of 1812 happened here, not in New Orleans as the history books would tell you.

So the museum has a few things about Cumberland Island that I didn't see before, and then they have a little oyster section, (I don't really know why), and then they have a section on 1812. I must admit I knew absolutely nothing about that War, so it was a little informative.

Tjis is a picture of the slave quarters on the island before the Civil War. And that is the church JFK Jr got married in...although updated. Then you have examples of toys the little slave children made and played with.



Here is a picture of Lucy Carnegie, who ended up owning 90% of this island.



This talks about how every night was a "formal" dinner at the Island house....evening gowns and tuxedos!



This is lucy and her 9 children....she is so tired she has to lean on the tree!!! And then you have a trunk...notice the built-in hangers and especially the travel iron at the bottom!!!!! And we must remember these came from about 1895-1900.



Then there is the small section on the War of 1812 (Iskipped the oysters). The story goes that the armistice was signed about a week before the Brits attacked Point Peter, the area that was supposed to protect St Mary's from invasion. The Brits kicked butt, and in the process freed a lot of thwe slaves that agreed to fight on their side.



So our day was done...then we saw this house, it ws built in 1834 so I took a picture.



And then just to show you how much they really stretch things here....get a load of this marker. It is about pecan trees!