October 10, 2014 - Camp Cheerio, NC

WOW! I am tired tonight! I quilted until 2am last night and woke up at 8:30 this morning, so it was a short night. That’s okay, though, because I got lots of quilting done!

Today, our group had so much fun. In addition to our own quilting projects, we spend lots of time visiting, offering suggestions, and playing some games. One game is “Left-Right-Center,” and of course, fabric pieces are involved. 

We also made Christmas ornaments as a surprise gift for Jennifer, the woman who organizes the retreat every year. She was surprised, so we did good!

We had a round-robin gift exchange that were had to be a sewing or quilting related item. I ended up with a beautiful tote bag that one of the women made and she put a journal and insulated cup inside. I started with a different gift bag, but in the exchange, it was stolen, not just once, but twice! I am really pleased with what I ended with.

The setting at Camp Cheerio is just beautiful. I had been waiting for the fall colors and they are here in the Glade Valley.

This afternoon it rained, and then poured, and lasted for quite a while. When the rain stopped, the fog rolled in over the valley and it was an amazing view!

The food at this YMCA camp is out of this world! Last night they fed us a wonderful pork tenderloin. Tonight’s dinner was blackened tuna, fresh veggies, beautiful salad bar, always beautiful desserts, and Portuguese cornbread. I could make a meal of just the cornbread – it is wonderful!

Earlier bedtime tonight – about midnight, so I should be really rested and ready to go in the morning! It will be another fun day, and we get the added benefit of having the Junior Guides at camp for the rest of the weekend. These little boys and girls are so cute – and it gets pretty noisy in the dining hall, but that’s what camp is all about.

I’m not sure what Tobey and Penny are up to, but I’ll let you know on Sunday!

October 9, 2014 Charlotte, NC to Camp Cheerio, NC

Crazy as it may sound, we camped outside Mary Jo’s Cloth Store last night in Charlotte! I wanted to get there when they opened at 9 so I could shop before heading up to camp and they said we sure could park there! About 8:30 this morning, Beverly, another quilter attending the retreat knocked on the RV door! Two other women attending the retreat, Kate and Valarie, arrived shortly after, so we were all ready to shop when the store opened.

We shopped and shopped, then shopped some more! Tobey said I had a 1 hour time limit so we could get back on the road and up the Camp Cheerio. Purchases in hand, back in the RV we headed north and arrived at camp about 1:30.

After unloading my stuff, Tobey took Penny and they took off to Stone Mountain State Park campground for the next three nights. I hope they will have half as much fun as I will! There are 15 of us here, from all over the US and Canada.
It rained late this afternoon, but cleared off before we headed to the dining hall and dinner. We are treated royally at this YMCA camp and the if you go away from a meal hungry, it is your own fault! The desserts are pretty darn yummy, too!

Sun was setting over the valley after dinner. Somewhere out there – about 6 miles from here, is where Tobey and Penny are camped.
Back to Sloan Hall and sewing until 2 am! Tomorrow we will see how the sewing goes and how much I can get done.

October 8, 2014 James Island, SC to Charlotte, NC

We left James Island County Park this morning and stopped at Camping World to fill with propane before heading north to Charlotte. Somehow the exit we had programmed into the Streets and Trips travel file didn’t get saved, but Tobey took an exit off I-26 by mistake and it turned out to be the one we wanted for Camping World! You have to get lucky once in a while!!! Wednesday is Good Sam discount day for propane, so that was good, too.

As we headed north on I-26 through South Carolina we are starting to see a few tinges of gold, red, and brown leaves, but for the most part, they are still green. It was a pretty drive and we arrived in Charlotte around 4:30. We went to Tobey’s Aunt Doris and Uncle Rudy’s for dinner, and his cousin, Suzy, and her son, Chase joined us. It was hard for us to believe we hadn’t seen them since our wedding in 1980! Suzy called two of her brothers so we could “face-time” with them. That was fun for Tobey to see his cousins who he had spent so much time with when they were growing up!

We had a wonderful evening with them and the time just flew by!  Before we knew it, it was time for Suzy to get Chase home and us to get back on the road. Email addresses and phone numbers were exchanged and I am sure it won’t be another 34 years before we get together again.

October 7, 2014 - Charleston, SC

We took the scooter into Charleston this morning so we could tour the old part of the city. We parked at the Visitor’s Center then took one of the free trolley’s south to Broad Street to start our self-guided walking tour of the Battery. I had pulled the pages out of an old AAA guide book and it did a great job describing the area, highlighting 27 buildings on the Battery Tour. The Walled City tour features 22 buildings, which we covered most of, also!

It was amazing how much history we don’t know! This is St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. During the Revolutionary War, its steeple was used as a target for British ship gunners, and the lead roof was melted to make bullets!


The inside of the church is simple, but beautiful. Notice the pew “boxes” - they are about 3 feet tall.

We walked along the elevated walkway which overlooks Charleston Harbor and looked out to the island where Fort Sumter is located. You might recall, the first shot of the Civil War was fired at the fort by the Confederates on April 12, 1861. We were thrilled to watch several dolphins in the harbor, very close to shore.

The house below was built in 1838 at 9 E. Battery Street. Apparently, there is a 500-pound piece of a cannon, said to be lodged in the attic since the Confederate evacuation in1863,when a gun blew up at the corner of East Battery and South Battery streets!

The white house below is at 2 Meeting Street. It was built by George W. Williams, a wealthy banker, around 1892 as a wedding present for his daughter. Not to be outdone, the groom’s parents sent the newly married couple on a 2-year tour of Europe for their honeymoon!

The house below belonged to “Dad Williams,” the same banker that built the house above. The brick house is 24,000 square feet, the city’s largest building constructed as a single-family residence. It has 35 rooms, each with a fireplace!

The big yellow building is the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. Since Charles Towne was a port and royal colony, this large exchange and customs house was completed in 1771 to manage trade activities. The yellow “don’t tread on me” flag flying out front was designed in Charles Towne by Col. Christopher Gadsen.

Along Elliot Street is an area known as Rainbow Row. The colorful stucco houses are said to be the longest cluster of intact Georgian houses in the US. They were built between 1723-1740 by merchants who had their shops on the first floor and lived in the upper stories. Once slums, they received the nickname in the 1930s when the facades were painted in pastel shades!

We stopped at the Circular Congregational Church, their sign states they are a progressive and inclusive community since 1681. The building was interesting from the outside, but we couldn’t go inside. The cemetery located at the church had several interesting gravestones – two had a very similar surname as ours, just one letter off in the spelling. I took a picture and am going to check it out in the family genealogy!

The building on the left in the picture below is the German Fire Company Engine House which was used between 1851-1888. The Fire Department was created after fire swept through the area in 1838, damaging St. Philip’s Church and many other structures. The shorter building to its right is the Old Slave Mart. This is where slaves were displayed and sold after a city ordinance in the mid-1800s prohibited the sale of slaves in front of the Exchange Building because of the disturbance it caused on East Bay Street.

It seems like I was taking pictures of almost every house we passed, because several of them had historic markers describing when they were built or who lived there. There is much to see here, and once again, not enough time!

We came back to the RV and took Penny for a long walk through the county park to their dog park. She LOVED swimming in the lake – going after a tennis ball, until another dog took it away from her.

She got her revenge, however. The other dog had a big stick, and she decided if he was taking her ball, she was going to have the stick. She swam out in the lake after it several times, then decided to take it home with us!

She is one tuckered pup now, snoozing away until morning, I’m sure! Tomorrow we are off to Charlotte, North Carolina.

October 6, 2014 Savannah, GA to James Island, SC

What a day! We left the Savannah Visitor’s Center this morning and drove to Bluff Drive because it was supposed to have a large collection of Antebellum houses. It was a pretty drive, but we would not have placed it in our top 10 things to see around Savannah.


We continued on to Tybee Island to see the lighthouse. It was built in 1867 and is supposed to be the tallest and oldest in South Carolina.The lower 60 feet of the lighthouse was built in 1773. Pretty scenery.

We also stopped to tour the Fort Pulaski National Monument. There is a long history of forts in this location – first Fort George in 1761, followed by Fort Greene from 1794-95. During the Revolutionary War, American patriots demolished the Fort Greene to keep it from falling to the British. Then Fort Greene was destroyed by a hurricane in 1804. It took 18 years to construct Fort Pulaski, beginning in 1829. It is shaped in a kind of irregular pentagon and is surrounded by a 7 foot deep, 32-48 feet wide moat and has a drawbridge.

The picture above is a demilune, a large triangular piece of land bordered on all side by the moat. It protected the rear, or gorge wall of the fort. During the Civil War, this area was flat with a surrounding parapet and contained outbuildings and storage sheds.



This portion of the fort was pretty interesting. It is the Southwest Bastion which burned in an 1895 fire. It was left unrestored to show various construction details of the fort. We spent a couple hours before getting back on the road.

Penny enjoyed watching over Tobey’s shoulder as we arrived in South Carolina.

We are camped at the James Island County Park. It is a very large campground with over 100 sites – all with full hookups!

We took the scooter and went to dinner at the Roadside Seafood Restaurant. We had a variety of their fish/shrimp tacos. They put a “BAM” sauce on them that was so spicy, I could hardly eat them! They sure look good, though! Tomorrow we will take the scooter into Charleston to tour the historic part of the city. I am sure it will be another busy day!

October 5, 2014 Savannah, Georgia

Another great day in Georgia! We walked through the Visitor’s Center and looked at some of the displays about the early days in Savannah, then wandered by the Georgia State Railroad Museum.
The Tri-centennial Park and Battlefield Memorial Park are directly south of the Visitor’s Center and has a re-created redoubt to show what it was like for soldiers during the Revolutionary War. It was interesting to see.

We continued on to Colonial Park Cemetery which dates back to about 1750, but closed to internment in 1853. So many of the gravestones are so worn that you can hardly tell there is any inscription on them! It is said there are over 10,000 people buried there, but only about 800 gravestones because so many were destroyed during the Civil War. The Cemetery in now part of the Savannah Parks System. The Historical Society has placed lots of interesting plaques telling about the people buried there.

We made our way to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist which was built in 1896.

It is one of the largest cathedrals in the South and was absolutely amazing. We happened to arrive between services so I was able to go in and grab a few photos, since tourists are not allowed during services.

We headed back to the RV by way of the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of America. She was born in the house below in 1860.
After lunch, we took the “Old Savannah Tours” company 90-minute trolley tour of the city. Our driver/guide, Sonny, was quite entertaining, as well as informative. We opted not to do the “hop-on, hop-off” feature since we had already walked most of the area.

Their tour company offers a feature that some of the “characters” from the area who are dressed the part, get on board the trolley and tell a little story.

We had a visit from a pirate from the “Pirate’s House” come aboard and tell his side of the story regarding “importing” alcohol and exporting or “Shanghai-ing” captives!

Forrest Gump also came aboard at one stop. Apparently, over 80 movies have had scenes filmed in Savannah!

We enjoyed hearing more about the background behind some of the beautiful historic homes in the area. I don’t know if it true, but our drive said the house below was ordered as a kit from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and the instructions weren’t very good. He asked what was wrong and Tobey knew the answer – the windows are installed upside down! Can you tell? I couldn’t.

We also learned that many of the old houses had beautiful balconies, but no doors out to them because doors were taxed. The owners got around the extra tax by putting in large windows and just stepped through them! Of course, iron was expensive, so the more ironwork on your home, the wealthier you probably were.
After the tour, we picked up Penny and headed back to the City Market area to listen to some of the music. She settled right in on the bench and enjoyed the music. It turned out to be the same guys we listened to yesterday and they were good.

We took Penny back then went back to the RV so we could go back to the Wild Wing Café to see the Broncos-Cardinal football game. We had some really good chips and salsa and the Broncos won, 41-20, so we left happy campers! Another band, the Steppin Stones, was playing just outside so we stayed to listen to them. They played lots of good rock ‘n roll music from Crosby,Stills and Nash to Led Zeppelin to Janis Joplin and lots of their own original music. It was entertaining and fun! They have a Facebook page I will have to check out when we have internet again!

We head out tomorrow toward South Carolina, but would love to come back to Savannah again!

October 4, 2014 - Statesboro, GA to Savannah, GA

We headed to Savannah this morning – it was only about 60 miles from Statesboro, so it was an easy drive. We had read that the Visitors Center allows overnight RV parking for only $7.00 a night and we thought we would check it out. Turns out to be true – and it looks like it will be a pretty quiet location right in the heart of the city.

After getting our 24-hour pass, we took Penny and started off exploring the city on foot. It is filled with a rich history dating back before the Revolutionary War. Founded by General James Oglethorpe and his settlers in February 1733, Savannah became England’s 13th and last colony. It is located on a bluff overlooking the Savannah River and became a prosperous port as a crossroads with England. Savannah was a key location during the Revolutionary War. In 1778 the British captured the city by surprise and made it their base of operations against the colonies until their departure in 1782.
We passed the First African Baptist Church which was built in 1859. It is the first brick structure in Georgia owned by blacks. It is open for tours, however, not when we went by.

We continued through the City Market area and down to River Street. Located on River Street is the Old Savannah Cotton Exchange building which was completed in 1887, during the era when Savannah ranked first as a cotton seaport on the Atlantic and second in the world. The Cotton Exchange was the center of activity and the staple which dominated this city’s economic life before its evolution into a leading industrial seaport.

Octoberfest is going on, so there were lots of arts and crafts booths, food booths, and music and entertainment. We even got to see the keg rolling contest.

At the east end of River Street is the Waving Girl Monument. The statue is of Florence Martus, the city light-tender’s sister. Martus became known to seamen all over the world for waving at every ship. Legend is that she promised her sailor sweetheart to greet every ship until his return.


We stopped at several squares and read the historical markers. Every square we went by – and there are 22 in the city – have statues or monuments of some kind. This was James Oglethorpe, founder of Savannah.

Penny was greeted by lots of people with remarks about “what a cute dog!” We had to agree. She was also becoming a tired dog, so we took her back to the RV to rest.
We caught the free DOT bus and headed over to Forsyth Park. In the 1840s, 10 acres of wooded land was set aside here for the development of Savannah’s first recreational park. It was named for Georgia’s former governor, John Forsyth. In 1854, the fountain was added. There are 52 different kinds of trees in the park, along with other plants. The park is beautiful and was busy with activities going on. As a matter of fact, tomorrow the city is sponsoring “Picnic in the Park” with free music and other activities. We will probably check it out!

We walked back to River Street and took the free ferry across to the Hutchinson Island then back to the Waving Girl Monument dock. We made our way home to change into jeans then headed out for dinner.at the Six Pence Pub. We both had French onion soup and shrimp salad sandwiches and it was good.