Catching up in Clearwater/St. Petersburg

St. Augustine

  Kennedy Space Center shares Merritt Island with the alligators, birds and other wildlife.

Kennedy Space Center

We had a very interesting tour and enjoyed the history of the space program, along with a tornado alert while we were on the tour bus.  Our driver pulled up next to the Launch Command Center and sat there until the alert was called off.  Turned out, the tornado was in Miami.

The Vehicle Assembly Building.  The stripes on the flag are 8 feet wide.

Rocket Garden

 Tarpon Springs

We moved on to the opposite side of Florida.  We tried to see manatees at Crystal Springs, but they've all moved out to sea, so that was a bust.  We drove down to Tarpon Springs to see the so-called Greek fishing village and were totally touristed out in about 10 minutes.

We spent the night in Clearwater and the next day, Saturday, we arrived in Punta Gorda to stay with my brother, Tim, and his wife Madeline.

Savannah. Oh Savannah!

We drove on to

only to find that it's closed on Sunday and Monday (this was Monday).  In spite of the Mosquito Meter, we decided to do a quick walk on the raised walkway through the wetlands.  This whole thing is a flood plain that, while not flooded at that time, floods fairly regularly.  People have tried to farm and log this land for two centuries.

Gotta laugh at the way Mother Nature thwarts the desires of us mere mortals, either with foods or bugs or hurricanes or ...

We pressed on, thinking we'd walk in Charleston.  However, the volkswalk that was on our way was at a plantation just a little west of Charleston.

one of many water features

a bridge over a water feature

Spanish Moss - neither Spanish nor moss, but a member of the pineapple family.

From there we decided to head to Savannah, since we had conquered South Carolina and still needed Georgia.

Savannah was absolutely delightful.  Hot and humid as everything else, but trees, parks and fountains everywhere.

Ray's photos of the riverfront walk will be added as soon as we can get them up from the car.  It's 10:00 pm and I'm not running down to the car to get them!

From Savannah, we continued on to Jacksonville, Florida to meet up with Gene and Susan, friends who moved there from Washington.  It was really great seeing them and I'm really sorry I never thought to take any pictures of them or their beautiful home.   We stayed in Jacksonville that night, then moved on to St. Augustine.

St. Augustine is a beautiful ancient (by American standards) seaside city.  Lots of old stuff, Spanish moss, old ships in the harbor.  We took the city tour because, as we've learned, it offers free parking and a terrific overview of the best things to see.  

Hilton has very distinctive architecture here

We didn't take a lot of pictures here.  It's so exactly what you expect.  I did have a fabulous seafood cobb salad at the A1A Alehouse as well as a gingery collins that was amazing, but not really worth a photo.  We traveled A1A down the coast, which offers surprisingly few sightings of the ocean due to private homes along the way, and have ended this day in Daytona.  I found (on TripAdvisor, I think) a great little tapas restuarant for dinner.  Gotta love the TripAdvisor!  More tomorrow.  And still one more state to walk in...

Columbia, South Carolina

Today started out a little rough.  We headed from LaGrange, Georgia to Stone Mountain Village to find the start box for the Stone Mountain walk in a bakery.  Unfortunately, the bakery was closed due to a son's graduation in Florida.  Hm.  Well, these things happen occasionally.  We went on to Stone Mountain anyway and looked around.  The South still mourns the Confederacy there. Ray an I both have been here before, but now it's considerably built up as a tourist attraction.  It's a great place for kids and is really set up for them.  There's a laser light show on the mountain at night.  We didn't stay.

Stone Mountain

We pushed on to Columbia, South Carolina.  While we drove, I checked out hotels and restaurants on TripAdvisor and RoadNinja.  By the time we checked in, we were able to go start the walk at a downtown hotel, stopping along the way at the Carolina Ale House for dinner.  We had a lovely after dinner walk (finished the volkswalk) along the Congaree River.  Very nice, if a lot humid and quite warm.

Seven states down, two to go.

Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana; Gulf Shores State Park ad Orange Beach, Alabama

Plaza near city hall, leading to waterfront

Well, we blew right on into Baton Rouge.  We found a decent hotel and did the volkswalk there that evening.  Baton Rouge is a nice town on the Mississippi River.  The walk started at a casino.  There's the river, then there's part 1 of the casino, then there's a road and then there's Part 2 of the casino.  Each part has a gift shop.  We had to spend some time actually locating the correct gift shop where the start box was.  Having passed that challenge, the rest of the walk was easy.  In spite of temperatures in the low 90's and about 50% humidity, we enjoyed the walk.

a boulevard park

shotgun "shack" with great sculpture

Thought the Old State Capital ...

was just a little

over the top.

Moving right along, we left Baton Rouge for New Orleans.  Oddly, there is no walk there, but we knew we wanted to see it since we were so close.  We navigated (using Tom Tom and Google on our phones) to a hop-on-hop-off bus tour.  It started at a beautiful information center and for $60 (including parking) had our day's entertainment.  We toured to the Garden District, where we hopped off to have lunch at Coquette.  Very nice.  Had an opportunity to taste mayhaw jelly, something I read about somewhere.  It's a native plant that provides a berry that, until recently, hadn't been widely used.  Very tasty.  Then we did a little tour of the Garden District on foot.  There were some pretty spectacular houses there.

Then we hopped back on the bus and went to the French Quarter.  That was fun and worth another trip some day, since we only had time to do an overview  We had to return to the visitor's center by 5 to get our car.

After leaving New Orleans, we drove to Slidell,  Louisiana to spend the night.  We had a fantastic dinner at Nathan's, complete with aWashington wine!  We were happy.  

The next morning, we hurried down to Gulf Shores National Seashore.  We not only got the volkssport credit for Mississippi, but we also got a stamp in my passport book for a National Park (well, seashore).  Very nice park, if a little buggy.  Biting flies in a few places were not fun.  Should have had some bug spray.  Is it humid?  Well, when I walked out of the air conditioned hotel this morning, my glasses fogged up.  

Start of the walk - before the biting flies

We saw most of these, as well as an alligator

Interesting mix of vegetation

Mississippi and Alabama are so close and there is so little of each on the gulf coast, that we sped off to do a walk in Alabama at Gulf Shores State Park.  What a weird amalgam of swamp vegetation and birds and blooming cactus!

always good advice

swamp thing

We felt that after two volkswalks we deserved a night at the sugary white beaches of Orange Beach, Alabama.  We got a lovely room overlooking the stormy waters of the gulf.  In the morning, we walked out on the lovely sand for a few minutes before the rain started spitting at us and we returned to the hotel.  Warm and muggy, but still really nice.

We drove all day today to get ourselves in position for a walk at Stone Mountain, Georgia tomorrow morning.