Last day on vacation

I ended up back in DC on the overnight train from Charleston. I do actually recommend this train, just not the overnight version unless you get a sleeping car. Which costs a fortune, so be warned.

I stayed with a family that rents guest rooms just a few blocks from the Capitol complex. It's kind of strange to see these huge, formal buildings right up against a neighborhood of completely ordinary row houses. Okay, fairly expensive rowhouses, but that's because of their location, not because they're grand or anything. Still toys in the front yards and hibachis on the balconies.

I tried to go into the Capitol building for a look around the parts open to the public, but forgot I had a box of chocolates with me. Um, no, I won't be leaving them in the trash, I'll just skip the Capitol, thank you.

So I walked through the growing heat and humidity toward the National Mall. I was meeting somebody for lunch at the National Gallery (National This, National That, all over), so took the opportunity to drop the box of sadly abused chocolates off at the coat check. No sense in re-re-melting them now, after thousands of miles of travel in airplanes, cars, trains and a little bit on foot.

Then off for a visit of the sights before it got truly beastly out. They were still cleaning up several days after the 4th of July celebrations. Nobody much was outside. The busses full of schoolkids and tourists discharged their loads and the people were immediately sucked into the air-conditioned comfort of our National Treasures.

Which were all free, as far as I could tell. That's one thing I really like about the capitol - you can visit. A little security check and you can go right into the buildings where our government is at work. You may even catch it working, if you time it just right. With even less checking you can go right into all the federal museums. They're the People's, after all.

The Washington Monument, seen from the only tree around. Strangely, some other photos I took there seem to not exist. I wonder if I'm missing a few minutes of memory covering the arrival of Secret Agents come to erase the Highly Sensitive Events I inadvertantly caught on chip. Or maybe I just planned to take them and didn't. Maybe it was time to get out of the sun.
Lunchtime!
Maurice and I got to meet a special friend - Reya! That was really cool. It's funny how you just click with people sometimes. I can't wait to see the photos of her new home, once she gets settled in.
Then it was back outside, after a nice lunch and a look around the Gallery. Outside was like a big sauna, so I leaped from building to building and took advantage of the tunnel linking the Capitol to the Library of Congress.
Now that looks like a very nice place to go and read.

Right next to the Library is the Supreme Court, again blindingly white in the summer sun. I had my sunglasses on and it felt like I had forgotten them. You can't go just anywhere in the Court building, but I love that you can just go in, and that lots of the people I saw going in were just ordinary people like me. Not much court business on this July Thursday.

And that was my summer vacation. Never an empty moment. I flew home on a Friday and arrived before noon Saturday at my house, where my cats were very very very happy to be let OUT. Nobody stopped for petting, they just went out. So I went out too, and watered and weeded and pruned and generally recovered from vacation.
Back to work now!
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Charleston

Next stop: South Carolina. The beach at Palm Island was filling up fast. I thought it was crowded when we got there (about 10:30; it's impossible to leave the house much earlier than that), but there were twice as many people by the time we left. Of course, it wasn't meerly a Sunday, but the Fourth of July, and most people seemed to be setting up to spend the whole day.

I miss walking on the beach, with the waves coming up, and the wet sand, and the patches of shells and pebbles.

Georgia picked up so many shells she kept dropping them and wailing over the loss. Here she has to pick just the four best ones to take home. No taking the whole beach.
Surprisingly, she picked just two in the end, and let the others go without further argument.

After the beach, let the SHOPPING begin.
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I found this fabulous metal pig at TJ's. Without the wings I definitely would have bought it. Love that red red color, and the hidden eyes and the blue trotters. The wings would have been fine if I didn't have to stuff the thing into my getting-overpacked luggage for an intercontinental haul. I really did think about it, though.

After TJ's and window-shopping in the cute little downtown area, and admiring the classic old Southern homes, we got down to business: treasure hunting.

Done shopping? What, already?
You ain't seen nuthin' yet, Tris. (Tristan is so trendy... but Tris is a common laboratory solution buffering agent, Trist is French for Sad... hmmm, what can be done with the middle name... Ben-jammin', that's a good one.)

Book shopping was a Must. The Blue Bicycle (or was it the blue bird? blue heron? blue something) had plenty of books and one cat.

YES, we're still shopping!
Most of the treasure hunting was done at the local thrift stores. Look through everything and eventually you'll find treasure. Which we did. I got a beautiful white linen sleeveless top, and some much-needed shorts.

The funnest thing about treasure hunting I didn't take a photo of. I really should have. A checkout, Georgia noticed a bin with several styrofoam heads in it, and wanted to know what they were for. I told her, naturally, that those were the heads that had been bitten off (having her own head bitten off is something George knows well). All the head stuff had been sucked out; that's why they were white.

Uh huh.
It's so fun how 4-year-olds consider new information.

But where were the bodies, then?

I pointed out all the headless torso forms lining the walls, displaying tops.

M Hmmm.

Their boss got really mad at them, and bit their heads off.

For making too much noise.

Marie says that if there are any nightmares concerning decapitation she'll be calling me. I did explain later that I was only making up a story, and there haven't been any calls.

The nicest part of the area is not the city or its outlying suburbs, but the marshy coastal areas and their fishing boats.

And the marshy coastal areas without boats. Without boats, docks and power lines would be even better, but we ran out of time to track that down.

On my last day, which I had meant to spend on the daytime train to DC but the train was full so I had to take the night train (mistake! Next time reserve early.), we discovered an excellent park just a stone's throw from Marie's house. Wide, level trails, boardwalks across the watery areas, a water park, a viewing tower, a great playground; it's a place they'll be going back to often. A chain of power lines crosses the park, and one of the pillars hosts an osprey nest. Thank goodness for the long lens, as Mom (or Dad?) flew circles above the nest.

And that was Charleston SC. One last vacation day, and it's back to France.

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Back to 'Bama

The last part of my vacation was so packed with stuff that I didn't take any time to blog. So let's catch up. After visiting the Bankhead National Forest for a day, we hit the road again. Destination: Augusta, Georgia, where tomorrow we'll meet up with my good friend Marie. Our plan is to get there without going to Atlanta, something the interstates don't really let you do. Which is just fine with me anyway! Traveling is about the whole journey, not just the destination.We did spend a few miles on the interstate, but mostly tooled along on the small highways, enjoying the country. That's how I like it.

I forget the name of the park where we stopped for our picnic lunch, but it was a nice one. This is the local Council Bluff, looking over a stretch of the broad and shallow river behind me.

Them folks again!

Mom almost picked up a new pet.

This is where we had dinner. I wanted good, old-fashioned barbeque, and we found just the place, in the very last town before being (more or less) obliged to take interstate 20 into Augusta. We had stopped in the previous town but they had noplace that Mom would eat at. I'm not so sure about that - there was a little restaurant on the town square that we didn't look at very closely. Mainly Mom didn't like the look of the town. Too run-down and abandoned.
This place was serving bbq pork, fried catfish, and chicken. I like the pig saying Eet Mor Fish! Since Indianapolis I'd been on the lookout for one of those Chick-fil-A billboards, the ones with the cows urging us to Eat More Chicken, but didn't find any. This place had lots of business, mostly takeout, and it was a great pile of real southern food we had. Definitely a good experience.

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Augusta seems like a nice enough place. Our hotel was along the interstate, one of those hotel-rows with nothing but the usual chains and fast food joints. Dad and I wanted to go out for a beer, so we walked along the road, which has no sidewalk of course. Nobody walks anywhere any more! They're making it so you can't, even if you want to.

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Along the road we considered which of the restaurants would be best, notably since we had already had dinner. The hostess at our hotel told us of a bar that would be filled with noisy college kids, and we didn't want that. The Mexican place would have been nice for a margarita, but the most awful karaoke was loud even across the street, so we passed.

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Then we saw the sign for the bowling alley. Aha. Going over there, there didn't seem to be any bowling alley, just a large abandoned building, when I spotted it on the next road. Yea! So we had a bottle of local brew and watched the bowling. There were two hotshots practicing on one pair of lanes, and next to them a group of their laughing friends throwing many gutter balls. No leagues tonight, just fun. I like to bowl, but we decided not to.

The next day, we were set to meet Marie and her family for a picnic at a nature reserve on the south side of town. That gave us the morning to pick a watermelon and find me a new lens cap. That's me with a sock for a lens cap after Caney Falls ate the real one. There are two photography shops in town, and the first was closed for vacation. Best Buy had lens caps, but not the size I needed. The second photography shop, happily, was open. They were even having a beginners class. And of course they had everything I needed; I even picked up an extra, just in case.On to the park, which is actually a water purification project, so the ponds are all rectangular and the berms straight and level. It's a big place, though, and if we'd been there an hour earlier we could have caught the weekly guided walk and seen a lot more wildlife. As it was, the temperature was climbing with the sun. On the good side, we did have the place almost to ourselves.Yep, there are alligators out there.

Most of the birds I was were in the act of flying away.

And then it was time for us to go, too. Mom & Dad were headed south for a few days in the Okeefenokee, and I joined my friends for a visit in Charleston-Mount Pleasant. More about that tomorrow!
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Wm B Bankhead National Forest

On the way to our day at the Bankhead forest area of Alabama, we passed the only remaining covered bridge in Cullman County. It's a nice one.

Doesn't go anywhere any more, though.

Here we are off for a walk to the Caney Falls. This nice dog was going to look after our car.
It's a beautiful little falls, though it did eat my lens cap.

At the ranger station they said there would probably be a bunch of people swimming there, but we had it all to ourselves.

A few miles farther on, we hiked toward another falls, but never found it.
We were going upstream, and it kept splitting into smaller and smaller tributaries, so it was only going to be a sad dribble anyway.So on to the falls at the far edge of the park. There were plenty of people at this one, including a couple of guys who were jumping off this rock where I'm standing, into the swimming hole.

The mama tank and all its little tanklets were fun.

And so back to Cullman at the end of a great day.

I've been to Alabama now! Just three states to go for the whole set.

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Road Trip

Time to leave Indianapolis and head south. Seems they really want to get rid of us!
Cool tank.

Southbound from Indy we did stop in Kentucky (there's a thing - we must stop in every state), for a picnic lunch, but I didn't take many pictures there. So this is Nashville.

Not all of their bridges still cross the river.

I like the bright newspaper containers they have down the side streets, off the main tourist strip.

Lots of murals!

Not all of which depicted country music & farming themes. Guinness and violins!

Jack's Barbeque was highly and repeatedly recommended by the staff at the welcome center. We just had some great ice cream and hit the road again.

Down to Alabama, home of Saturn rocket design.

And ducks in the middle of the road.

We're staying two nights in Cullman, to visit the Bankhead National Forest just west. More tomorrow!

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