June 3, 2016
No Boat Travel
One really good thing about planting a car at a destination point, it provides lots of options for places to visit. Since we had Jeff's rental car at our disposal, we considered our choices for today and decided that we should take Sierra to the beach one more time before she left us. Since she naps in the afternoon, we decided to go to the beach first to maximize her fun time. Devon went on "Google" and found the best place to go for public access to the beach was the Huntington Beach State Park. Although other beaches have access paths to the beach, they provide no parking.
Sierra loves water in almost any way, shape, or form. She also loves digging in the dirt (sand). The beach is a perfect spot for her to have a great deal of fun. As soon as we stepped on the beach, however, we wished we had a beach umbrella. Unfortunately, we don't own one (where would we store it) and the park does not rent or sell them. Okay ... full sun it was then!
Well before Sierra and family joined us on board the boat, I found a shop that sold cheap beach buckets and shovels and picked one up in preparation of their visit. Sierra loved them!
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| Playing with the Sand Toys and Frisbee |
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| The "Sierra Look" "You taking my picture again?" |
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| Devon, Sierra, and Jeff Playing at the Beach |
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| Jeff, Devon, Sierra, and Ev frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean |
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| Clark, Jeff, Devon and Sierra |
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| Dig in the Sand Time -- Lego Mini Mouse and Anna Doll (from Frozen) in the bucket |
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| Here comes a wave - YAY! (Clapping) |
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| Notice Jeff is temporarily no longer in the picture |
How Jeff could continue standing with the force of the waves hitting him with her on his shoulders, I'll never understand!
We ate lunch at the beach - one we had brought from "home". Heaven forbid we should need to leave early to go in search of food! Finally, however, we decided that we had had enough beach fun and headed back to Georgetown.
After all that beach, water, and sun, Sierra fell asleep in the car. She continued her nap on the boat. Devon decided to stay with her while Jeff, Clark and I went to see the Rice Museum. Jeff seemed interested and Devon did not care, so it was an easy decision. Remembering the sign on the Rice Museum said "last tour at 3:30" we hurried ourselves along to get there on time. We arrived at 3:15 and found the last tour had already started. We joined them "already in progress".
Devon did not miss much by skipping the Rice Museum. Jeff and I both found the tour guide a bit "odd". I am not quite sure why. For me I thought his jokes were off the mark. I made the mistake of faking a chuckle for his first joke and then I saw him look at me for everyone thereafter for confirmation that someone "got them". I got his jokes - I just didn't want them.
We started our rice museum tour in the town clock building and ended it in the old hardware store / building next door. My photographer (Clark) apparently took a break during the Rice Museum tour in the clock building as there was not one picture on the camera for the blog updates. I can understand why though as most of this part of the museum consisted of model replicas illustrating the rice manufacturing process.
At the end of that portion of the tour the guide walked us over to the other, hardware, building and sat us down for a video. I was amused to see that the video consisted of pictures of the models in the museum with dialog describing the models. Basically, the video repeated, in its entirety, the information provided by the guide along the way, without the awful jokes, and with a much better presentation. The video was in fact well done!
Precisely at 3:30, just as we started to watch the video, another set of folks showed up and joined our in-progress tour. Since they were "so late" for the 3:30 tour, they missed the entire presentation in the Town Clock building. After watching the video, our guide left us to self-tour the last part of the tour and took the "late comers" over to the town-clock building to see what they had missed.
The most interesting display in the maritime portion of the Rice Museum tour was the shell remains of the Brown's Ferry Vessel that was found by an amateur diver in a river near Georgetown. Much of the wood was preserved due to the natural existence of turpentine in the fresh water where it was discovered. The museum stated that the "Brown's Ferry Vessel is the most important single nautical discovery in the United States establishing primary evidence of American shipbuilding 50 years earlier than previous discoveries."
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| Shell Remains of the Brown's Ferry Vessel |
The second half of the Rice Museum tour took place in what was originally the Kiminski Harware Co. store. To put the Brown's Ferry Vessel on display in this building, a portion of the roof was removed and replaced after the boat was positioned inside.
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| Kaminski Hardware Store Display |
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| On display at the "rice museum" |
As I wandered by a display with outboard motors, I knew they would catch Clark's attention and they did. I was not surprised to find a picture of an outboard in the blog photo options.
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| Johnson Outboard Motor |
After all the "hard work" of touring the two museums, we decided to stop for ice cream at the Harvest Moon ice cream shop. Jeff was very happy that he could get his ice cream sampler in a cone this time. Sweetie's did not have a cone large enough to hold four scoops.
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| Jeff's Four-flavor Ice Cream Cone - yikes! |
Sierra has reached an age where she has a nice-sized vocabulary and has overcome some of her shyness around folks who are not her parents. I had a great time playing with her while we were together. Although sometimes our play is not what one would consider conventional like the way we played cards together for example.
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| Sierra (and me) having a great time playing cards together. I think they call the game "52 Pick Up". (Notice Mini Mouse is never too far away from Sierra) |
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| Sea Moss at Sunset in Georgetown, SC |
Day 329
June 4, 2016
NM Today: ~ 1
After saying goodbye to Jeff and family last night, I went back to the boat and started packing for our own trip. We have plans to stay in Connecticut for a few days to babysit our new, three-month old granddaughter. The week after we will be in New Jersey for a slew of overdue doctor's appointments.
After checking rates, Clark decided that we needed to move the boat to get a better weekly docking rate while we are away. He selected Hazzard Marina, which is a short distance away from the Harborwalk Marina, charges less per foot per week, and does not add a highly-priced, flat-rate electric charge on top.
In preparation for the trip I staged all our travel items into the now vacant second stateroom. Since I had a number of now unnecessary items to remove from the boat, I managed to fill up half the room with "stuff" - mostly cold-weather clothes and used navigation charts and materials.
I reserved a rental car through Enterprise well in advance and expected to be able to call them to come "pick me up" as they advertise. I started calling at 9:15. After 45 minutes of no connection, dropped calls, or listening to their "music on hold" description of how wonderful they are, I had about given up on reaching them. Besides wanting to get underway for our trip to NJ, we also had a 12:00 checkout time to worry about at our current location.
We had just decided to move the boat to the Hazzard Marina and try again later to contact Enterprise, when we had two successes. At 10:15 a person at Enterprise finally answered the phone, while at the same time Clark found a local couple returning from a boat outing who offered to drive us there to get the car. Whew! Since Enterprise said it would be at least 20 minutes before they could send someone, we took up the "locals" on their generous offer and left immediately!
We picked up our rental car, returned to the Harborwalk Marina, left the car and set sail immediately for Hazzard Marina. Since Hazzard is less than a mile from Harborwalk, we arrived and were docked in no time at all. Once secured, Clark walked back to the Harborwalk Marina and retrieved the car.
Since the morning had been shot trying to reach Enterprise, moving the boat, and packing the car, we decided to eat lunch on board before starting our trip to New Jersey. I thought we might make the whole trip without a motel, so I made sandwiches for supper to eat on the road. We finally pulled away from the marina with a very packed rental car at 1:30 p.m.
The trip home to Rumson took almost exactly twelve hours - we arrived home at 1:20 a.m. having stopped only for fuel and restrooms along the way. Since we have not been home in several months, the house needed to be "turned on" including such things as the refrigerator, water, and hot water heater. I found when I went to bed that I had left the bed stripped of sheets, so before I could climb in, I had to make the bed. Even so, we were in bed and asleep shortly after 2:00 a.m. What a day!
June 4, 2016
No Boat Travel
When we awoke on Sunday, we found that we had no hot water as our new hot water heater has a "vacation mode" option that needed to be turned off. Eventually we got hot showers. Then we ran around doing errands and along the way got a very special invitation to stop by to visit some friends of ours. Once at their home, they offered us dinner! We quickly changed our plans to go out to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary with a quiet dinner for the two of us as we both wanted to spend time with our friends! Since our anniversary is June 7th, that dinner could wait.
Tropical Storm Colin threatened to ruin our day. We were worried about the boat as well as road conditions in New Jersey for the drive back to Rumson. The storm turned into a big nothing for both Georgetown where the boat sat and New Jersey where we sat. As we drove home after dinner, however, we did get to see a beautiful, double, full rainbow brought on by the odd weather conditions of full sun while raining. We saw a primary rainbow in brilliant color and, next to it, a second, more faded rainbow. Both rainbows spanned the sky and made full arches. Just gorgeous!
Welcome home!
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| Rainbow as we drove through Little Silver, NJ |
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| Somewhat faded, but still visible, rainbow as seen from our backyard |
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