A Little "catch-up"

I'm going to try and catch up a bit while we are at Edisto Island, SC. We are 'sitting still' at a Wyndham Condo, and the weather isn't going to be too nice the next day or so...so here goes-

We left Florida for Kingsland, GA and spent 5 days there. Kingsland is right off I-95 halfway between Jacksonville and Brunswick, GA. Our first full day there we took care of maintenance issues onthe coach, sort of got organized, and I did some woodcarving. I'm working on some Father Christmas carvings. The next day we headed for the Okeefenokee Swamp.

Tim standing by the Chesser House

We enjoyed the National Park Center there, catching up on some history of the "Swampers"--those brave self-reliant folks who made do in a tough environment. They battled insects, snakes, alligators, not to mention the hot humid summers, and scrabbled out a living. The Chesser House still stands hidden among a bunch of pine trees and palmettos and is open to the public. Built in 1928, it is in good shape, although one can see the sand below the house through the spaces between the floorboards. The whole white sand yard is raked continuously to aid in the spotting of approaching snakes!

We also did a swamp tour, enjoying the banter of a 7th generation Swamper. We saw countless alligators, turtles, water birds, but thankfully no snakes. It was a quiet and still area, punctuated only by bird calls. A lot of the tour was through a canal dug by a company bent on harvesting the cedar forest in the swamp. The work was done by prisoners mostly, and the project ended when the lumber company went belly up.

A gator slithering through some swamp plant life

Late that afternoon, we met up with Lucy and Marshall Kendall in Brunswick. Marshall was also a Proton Therapy patient, just graduating Monday. Marshall is an amateur woodworker, and he is changing the lucite lenses used in beam treatment into bowls. He is turning them on a lathe and then attaching the bowl to a turned wooden base. They are beautiful, and he making them as a fund raising project to assist proton patients needing assistance in housing during their 8 week treatment regimen. He now has one of my lenses, and we are excited to see the finished product.

Next...St. Simons Island, GA, a must-see in this neck of the woods.