South Carolina, AKA, Vacationland (07-08-18)

There is no research we need to do in South Carolina at the moment, so we are “on vacation”. It’s the week before July 4th  and we have no reservations made.  It’s getting close enough that it was stressing me out, not having a “spot”, so we sat down with the calendar, and a map. 

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We had decided that we’d love to go to the beach for a few days, and figured that Myrtle Beach would be fun,  but what are the odds we’d find a spot?  Armed with a list of Campgrounds, we call the first one, the one that looked the best, and were shocked to hear that they did indeed have an opening (helps to be in a truck camper!).

With that reservation taken care of, we started looking for places to stop along the way.

Facebook makes it somewhat easier to connect with people, and my cousin, who I haven’t spent time with in about 40 years, saw where we were headed, and reached out. We had a great dinner with her and her husband Jimmy at their home in South Carolina.

  

It isn’t often that we get a chance to visit a National Park that we’ve never been to before but Congaree National Park is in South Carolina.

Congaree is an old growth floodplain forest, one of the few left in this country.  As you would think, when it rains, this area, which is bordered by bluffs on both sides, fills with water.

The trees that grow here are capable of surviving in standing water. The Bald Cypress trees surround themselves with a root system called knees.  No one is really sure what their purpose is but perhaps they work as a snorkel.

There is one other creature that flourishes in the floodplain forest:

July 2 we arrived at Myrtle Beach. We’ve been here before but we have never stayed here. Our campground has just about everything you could want, and we made good use of it all over the July 4th holiday.

Their pool even boasts a Lazy River.  We didn’t spend much time in the pool, but we did check out the Lazy River during the “adults only” hour.





The ocean is what I was excited about- the weather was gorgeous and the water temperature was in the 80s! We could walk to it from our site- priceless!

I spent a lot of time in the water, and it was so warm that even Paul came in pretty often…

We realized the first day that we were ill equipped for a stay at the beach, so we hit up the stores and now own two beach 

chairs and an umbrella.

With numerous pool parties, dances and assorted contests, there was plenty to do over the holiday. There was even a parade, right outside our door.

We knew we were in the right spot when people started pulling their chairs up all along our street.

Once the parades, barbequing and dancing was done, we took our chairs and walked to the beach where we could watch all the fireworks that were being set off by the hotels along the waterfront.

We are really spoiled as far as fireworks go, so we just enjoyed the fact that we were watching from a beach, didn’t have to drive, and were wearing shorts and a t-shirts.

Portraits of July 4th and more (07-06-15)

We spent the July 4th weekend in Southern California, parked outside Paul’s brothers house.  What a great time! Lots of great conversations,

….Lots of laughs were had by all….

and Paul’s nephew Doug and his wife Emily came down fro

m San Francisco for the holiday.
 













 

….We played some serious card games…..

and Paul’s mom flew in from Texas for the festivities.

This guy flew in from the neighboring yard.

….We all thoroughly enjoyed the pool….

3 year old William loves to jump in.

 
Some of us Sue Porters enjoy a beverage while we swim…












  When we had some quiet time, Paul’s brother Tom took us over to his office to show off the new 2016 Kawasaki Teryx.  No, we didn’t buy one…..yet.

Ever wonder what a motorcycle capable of speeds up to 200 mph looks like?  Well, now you know. This photo of the Kawasaki Ninja H2R answers that question.

The only thing that would have made the weekend better is if our daughter Jess had been able to get the day off and come down from L.A. But she couldn’t, so that called for a change of plans on our part.  Instead of heading back to Havasu, we detoured to Los Angeles.

Cherry Festival- Traverse City, MI (7-5-11)

                                                                       Traverse City is high on our list of favorite places right now.  In fact, it’s high on our list of places we could see ourselves  living- but only six months of the year!  I really wouldn’t want to spend the winters here, but who wouldn’t want to wake up to this view every morning?

  

Of course one of the first things we had to do when we arrived in Traverse City was to eat Cherry Pie.  In fact we’ve already done that several times this week, and I doubt we’re done.  We also got some fresh cherries but since the spring has been so bad, the cherries were brought in from further south- the Traverse City cherries are not ripe yet.

We’ve wandered the grounds of the festival and enjoyed the music, the food and the carnival atmosphere.

July 4th here reminded me a lot of July 4 back in Boston.  The fireworks are set off from a barge out in the harbor, which means people can enjoy them both from the shore and from boats.

 

July 4th weekend

For years, the week of July 4th has been a particularly fun time for me.  For the many years that my dad and I had a boat, we would take that boat onto the Charles River for 5 days with a bunch of other boating friends.  We'd all tie up together, and then the party would begin!  Of all the years I've made that trip, 1998 was the most special. For the first time after the death of my dad, I had to drive the boat by myself the 3 hours from Danvers to Boston. On July 2, 1998, with my boat tied up to 8 others, I was having a grand old time partying. A solo boater pulled up and asked if he could tie his 30 ft boat up to mine for a couple of days, since it looked like we had a safe spot with a great view. My friends and I agreed we had room for him, so a few minutes later his boat was secured and he spent the next 2 days partying with us.  That solo boater was my husband Paul. Two years later we were married, and I've never been happier.
      Life brings changes, and we no longer have a boat, and although every July 4th  I miss my boating friends,  the memories of our Boston trips will always make me smile.

        As for the last few days, we did take our dinghy out on Table Rock Lake  for the day on Thursday.  We packed a picnic lunch to eat out on the lake, and the water was the perfect temperature for swimming.  Thursday night our show was "The Haygoods"- a family of 8 siblings who not only sing great harmonies, they play most of the instruments themselves as well.  All of them play the fiddle, which made their rendition of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" awesome.  I really enjoyed the show.  Afterwards they asked the audience to stick around because they had a film crew from L.A. there to tape a live version of their new original song, and they needed an audience for the filming.  It was fun being there while they did 4 takes. Who knows- maybe someday we'll see ourselves on TV.

    Yesterday it was time to zip on the ZipLine for the first time!  I was a little nervous  as I let go of the tower for the first time, but after that initial moment,  I really enjoyed the trips along the cables. Would I do it again?  Probably not unless there was something new and unique to it.  It was a lot of money just to zip on 4 ziplines for the heck of it.  It was fun though, and I wanted to try it, to see how it was.
     Last night we went out to dinner at a small Mexican restaurant- the Margaritas were great, and the entire dinner was under $50.  Not bad.
Paul started the day feeling a little lazy, and then feeling guilty for feeling lazy. We didn't feel like venturing out too far, and it is supposed to rain today, so he is doing projects around the trailer, and I am doing laundry and catching up on paperwork.  Tonight is our last show- a comedian named Paul Harris.