2015 - The New Year

New Year's day found us once again on the road, headed back home from our Christmas vacation in Florida.  Chris has long wanted to spend some time in Savannah, GA, so it was a great opportunity to make that our stopping point on the way back home to North Carolina.  It was a pretty long drive, 6 or 7 hours, so we got in late that evening.  Dinner was first on our minds, we were hungry!  Had a fun time at the "original crab shack"

Our room was so nice, we ended up staying another night!  

Painted ceiling of the bedroom

The Original Crab Shack - a big property with lots of seating

Chris got crab and I got ribs

Trying to get us photo bombed by the gator!

The next morning we started to get ready to head into to town for our Segway tour of downtown Savannah, but when we plugged the address into the GPS, it looked like it would take us much longer than we anticipated.  Tybee Island is where our hotel was, and I guess we didn't realize we were that far out from town! No problem, we re-scheduled our tour for the afternoon, which then left us with some time to spare.  First up, an early morning walk on the beach just out back of our hotel.

On our way into town, we discovered a zoo!  Why yes, of course we would like to stop there...

Can you just imagine how beautiful this would be in spring or summer? 

We had to be out of there by noon, so we could make it to town in time to eat lunch before our tour.  Enjoyed a wonderful little bistro where were had soup and sandwiches, a short walk from the tour company.

It was the first day they had patio seating - they just got the tables and chairs

Chris getting his lesson the Segway

Some sights in beautiful down-town Savannah.

Chris had so much fun on his first Segway tour!  He learned it really fast, and said that it was probably the best way to take a city tour that he'd ever seen.

Dinner that night was delicious! We ate at Anne's, in the downtown market quarter. 

 The next morning after checking out of the hotel, we did some sight seeing on Tybee Island.

One last stop for lunch, I couldn't leave Savannah without eating at Paula Deen's restaurant! We had to make reservations the day before to get in for lunch.. It was yummmmmy!

Cheddar biscuit and corn cake

Fried Green Tomatoes

and of course, had to try her famous fried chicken, which was totally worth it!

How did I miss this in all our tooling around?? Next time then..

For a short visit, Savannah sure was fun! We will have to plan on going back for a little longer, much more to see I'm sure.  It was a great and adventurous start to 2015!

Christmas 2014

This year brings a different and welcome opportunity to travel to Florida and spend the holiday with Chris' family.  Initially I was scheduled to work the day after Christmas, so we hadn't planned on leaving until the Saturday after.  But my schedule changed, and so we decided last minute that we could leave on Christmas Eve and be in Ft. Myers to spend Christmas day with Madeleine and Neil.  I worked a lot of hours leading up to the holiday break, so didn't have much time to get stuff done like I had wanted to.  Christmas Eve morning I was cooking, making enchiladas for my neighbors' gifts.  Chris had to do all the planning and most of the packing so we could leave sometime that day!  After spending a few precious moments with our friends across the street and beside us, we finally were able to get on the road late in the afternoon.  We had a wonderful 5 hour trip to Jacksonville, FL, where we planned to stop over for the night.  We made it to our hotel at the Sawgrass Golf Resort (Chris had found some exceptionally good deals online) around 10pm.  We pulled up to the door, and  were getting ready to turn off the car to go inside and check in, when we noticed the clock and some dash lights were still on after pushing the on/off button. We could see a quick flash of some sort on the dash, but couldn't determine what the error was.  When I finally could get a good glimpse of the red error indicator, I was able to look it up in the manual.  What I read was not encouraging.  "This indicates your car has a malfunction, take it to a dealership immediately."  We are in a strange city, and it's Christmas Eve.  No way we are getting help tonight! The Mazda roadside assistance explained we would have to get a jump in the morning, get to where we were going and then find a dealership when the world opened back up again.  Ok, that sounded good to me - but Chris had a brilliant idea to unhook the battery so that it wouldn't drain and we'd be able to start it again in the morning.  Just the idea of losing it's power source must have scared our little car, because as soon as the hood was popped, our key fobs started working again!  Then the car shut down completely like it suppose to.  *whew* Crisis averted!

Waking up Christmas morning in a hotel in Florida was a little strange, I must admit.  We have now joined the mass of people who travel on holidays.  And Florida wasn't exactly the "white Christmas" postcard.. but a different kind of postcard.

Sawgrass in Jacksonville, FL

We got back on the road again, hoping to make it to Ft. Myers by 2 or 3.

Feels exciting seeing all the water, driving on long bridges

I had no idea we would be driving through Orlando.. you always know when you are near Disney, they do the details right.  It was terrible to have to pass right on by!

As we neared Ft. Myers, the sky got bluer and we had to break out sunglasses for all the brightness! It had been cloudy at home too for the past few days if not a week.

We did great on time and made it to Chris' mom's house just in time for their Christmas dinner.  The retirement community they live in put together a wonderful pot-luck dinner for all the residents who either didn't have family or couldn't travel anywhere to be with family.  We were graciously welcomed and introduced around to many wonderfully nice folks.  And after driving for two days, eating mostly snack foods along the way, we were so hungry and ready for some real food.  We really enjoyed that dinner!

Our gifts to each other this year was this trip, but I had wanted a new camera for a long time, so we decided to get me one so I could take great pictures while we were in Florida.  I was so excited, I couldn't wait to get shooting.

Mom and son - working on some focus issues with the camera

Looking out the window from their upstairs condo - this is very far away.  Zoom works great!

I had been thinking for a couple of years now that I wanted to get Chris some type of ocean experience like swimming with dolphins or something.  Well, the closest thing I could find in Ft. Myers was a sea life excursion out to an island near Sanibel.  Chris' mom and Neil are getting a little slower in life these days, so we couldn't talk them into this adventure with us.  But it worked out just fine because it gave them a chance to rest and relax while we went exploring.  It wasn't the best of adventures, as we soon found out it was geared more for children than adults, and we did not come prepared to wade into waste deep water so Chris didn't want to get his shorts wet.  Not much netting happened, but the island itself was really beautiful.

The dock at Sanibel Island was only a short 15 min drive

Getting sunblock on, preparing to board the boat

Lots of Osprey's and other birds were perched on nests all around us

Got a close up look at a Manatee, floating by the dock

Headed out to the island

This dolphin was raising some fuss, scaring people by looking a little too much like a shark

Really one of the only things we found while beach combing

He's suppose to wade out and use the net to catch things, but he didn't want to get his shorts wet!  

Overall, it was a fun boat ride if nothing else.  The captain and his son were very knowledgeable about the area and gave us lots of great information about the Sanibel area.  We made it back to mom and Neil's and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with them that night.

Neil showed us around with the top down!  A perfectly lovely Sunday drive.

Learning to play Euker (or however you spell it)

Waking up in the morning.. they haven't done that together in a long time!

We also really wanted to see some beach, so Chris and I drove out to Sanibel Island in search of the perfect spot to set up our beach chairs and soak up some sun.  I have to admit, while not a more traditional way to spend a Christmas holiday, we sure didn't mind being warm on the sand and enjoying the calm, shallow waters of the Florida sea.

Enjoying the drive out to the beach

Ah yes, just perfectly done.  We could do way worse than this for a Christmas holiday!

It's a calm sea

A few adventures on the way back home - a nature preserve...

...and the shell museum

The only dark spot on our otherwise wonderful day at the beach was the traffic!  Going back was ten times worse than coming onto the island, so we finally called it quits and pulled over to find a nice place to eat.  We enjoyed a nice dinner before finally making it back home again.

Some highlights of the wonderful time we got to spend with our family:

Manatee Park
Another chance to enjoy the top down!  Usually the Manatees swim up in this canal which is runoff from the power plant, but today the water was warm enough they were enjoying the open ocean and we didn't get to see much.

 

Broadway Palm
Madeleine had a wonderful idea to take us to a nice dinner and a theater show.  The buffet was amazing, food was so good.. We enjoyed a salad bar, dinner bar and dessert bar!  The play we saw was very good too, really enjoyed our night on the town.

Fort Myers Beach

We were not going to turn town an opportunity to get a personal tour of the local beach once again with the top down! We sure enjoyed the nice drives that we took, and had a chance to walk the beach a little too.

We were so grateful for the hospitality and wonderful time to visit with Chris' mom and Neil, but I'm sure they were glad to see us go, as we had a really good but long stay with them. It was time to pack our bags and start the journey back home again. It was a great Christmas, and wonderful visit.  Goodbye Florida!