September 27- October 2, 2022 Minnesota with friends

I left Dave to watch the boat during hurricane season and went to SD, MN and OK for 3 weeks.  The first 2 weeks were with my grade school/ high school girlfriends from Miller, SD.  The third week was with my sisters in OK.

While I was away, a storm passed by our marina.  All was fine.

forecast on the 27th.  our boat is at the 2pm Friday spot

9-29 We're south of Savanah

9-19, stayed off shore. We're the red pin

September 27, I flew into Sioux Falls, SD to stay with Sheryl Gerdes Bedard.  Sheryl, Gail Zeller and Lori Schneller and I had planned a vacation together at a VRBO in MN.  We spent a day packing and prepping to drive to Minnesota.  Sheryl has a dog she needed to take to friends to care for while we were gone.  Gail arrived from Miller about 6:30pm.  Lori used to live in Canton, SD, but she moved to Nisswa, MN this summer.  We found a VRBO within an hour’s drive from her home.  She’s still working, and with the move, only had 5 days instead of a week of vacation.  

9-29 We drove to the VRBO home on a small lake near Aitkin, MN.  Lori joined us there and brought a pork roast that her husband had grilled for us.  We spent the evening visiting and relaxing in the beautiful home.  

9-30 Today we drove into Nisswa, where Lori now lives.  We walked around the shops downtown, very touristy town, and had lunch.  We visited Rod and saw the house that is being built by their son in law to rent to them on their property.  We found a local restaurant along the highway on the way home, The Green Lantern Grill.  It was a busy place. 

restaurant for lunch

beer break

 

10-1 Saturday We spent the day enjoying the VRBO and grilled steaks for dinner.

10-2 Sunday.  Lori and I drove into Crosby to go to church at St Joseph Catholic Church.  The entrance hymn was Holy Holy Holy.  At the VRBO yesterday, Lori had picked up a hymnal on the book shelf and opened to that exact song, and we all sang it.  Another song was sung to the Gaelic tune that was used for Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens in the 1970’s.  He was a favorite of mine and Lori’s.  So we felt it was meant to be for us to go to church together that morning.
We drove into Baxter/Brainard that afternoon to go to the movie theater.  It seems to be a tradition when we are together.  We ended up going to 2 movies,  Where the Crawdads Sing and Top Gun 2.  After the movies we returned to our VRBO, about a 30 minute drive.  Once we were there, I realized I didn’t have the house key.  We called the theater and they had found it.  Sorry to say, but we had to drive back.

August 16- September 22, 2022 Mary's Scoliosis and marina events

 8-16 We were right on the Central and eastern time zone line, so we lost an hour that morning.  We make it to Brunswick, Ga by 6:00pm.  We stopped at a Mexican food truck at a brewery downtown Brunswick before going back to the boat.  I dropped off Dave and our luggage at the boat so he could start cooling it down and the refrigerator/freezer.  I went directly to the Publix grocery store.  Besides picking up groceries, I was able to say hello to our son, Peter, who works there.  I also bought a bag of ice and put everything in our freezer for the night.  We didn’t go to bed until the air conditioning lowered the inside temp to 80 degrees.  
8-17   We had to be back today because Dave has an appointment for lab work this morning at 10:00.  His phone didn’t make the automatic change in the time zone, so he was going to be late.  They let him reschedule to 11:00, thankfully.  I had an appointment at 4:00pm with a spine doctor.  He showed me the x-rays of my MESSED UP back.  The scoliosis was severe in my lower back which explained my problem areas.  I also have degenerative spine in my lumbar region.  But no surgical treatment is necessary.  And as long as it stays mobile, I should be able to avoid that in the future.  He referred me for physical therapy.  I was actually happy to have a plan to help me stay out of pain and avoid surgery.  

8-18 Dave had his annual exam at the VA this morning.  He hadn’t seen a Dr in person since before Covid early 2020.  Our refrigerator and freezer were’t cooling like it should after we turned it off for the first time.  So Dave started looking into that.

8-19 Friday. We went to our storage unit today to figure out where we were going to store our cedar chest and paintings.  We made it work.  Dave was feeling like he had a urinary tract infection, started antibiotics and took it easy.  We had Pete over for dinner.  We had brought a frozen crawfish étouffée back from Louisiana and shared that with Pete.  Pete and I went up to the marina’s happy hour late and he played music and we played cards with friends.  
8-20 to 9-9. Usual marina functions and boat projects.

pizza night on the dock

Dave's homemade Gnocchi

tried to have a happy hour on the dock, but a catamaran owner invited us to his boat

Dave's homemade bread

9-9 Friday Pete, Dave and I went to Woodbine, GA for their Woodbine Oprey bluegrass night.  We’ve only gone on Saturday nights for the old country music.  They served a meal of 2 tacos, chips and a drink for $6.  Great deal.  The bluegrass night is more of an open mic event and people took turns leading a song as others played along.  The Saturday night event is more structured and retired professional musicians play.  We visited with one of the performers afterwards.  They would love to have Pete join them anytime.  
9-12 We drove to Jacksonville early this morning to take Pete to the airport.  He is flying back to Rapid City, SD for a week to play a gig with his old band, the River Liffey Boys.  Murphy’s Pub celebrates Sept 17 as half way to St Patrick’s Day, also known as St Practice Day.  After dropping him off, we stopped for breakfast in St Mary’s at Cedar Oak cafe.  There were new owners and management.  We enjoyed our breakfast.  Photos are from 9-17-22 in Rapid City.

Toni Moore, Janice Zeller Mooore, Pete and Cheryl Ulmer

Back at the marina, I started helping a committee plan a fundraiser for another boater and friend, Eric Thompson, who has rectal cancer.  He and his wife live on their sailboat full-time, but they are not of retirement age.  They are/were both still employed.  So many of the boaters wanted to do something to help them out.  Much of my time between now and the event, Sept 22, was spent on planning, PT for my back, and packing for a SD trip with girlfriends.  
9-22. The fundraiser was a huge success.  We planned a beach party theme.  The marina provided the food for a “picnic” type of meal-hamburgers, hotdogs, coleslaw, individual bags of chips, and cookies.  Another boater offered to fry fresh caught fish.  We asked for a donation for the plate of food, not an all you can eat buffet.  Boater donated alcohol and mix for a rum punch and margaritas, bottles of wine and a keg of beer.  That was also on a donation basis.  We had sold raffle tickets for a 50/50 drawing.  And we had a silent auction.  We thought we might have 5 items, but we ended up with over 30.  People came dressed in beach attire.  We had games to play to make it more festive.  We had hoped to raise at least $1000.  The place was packed and we raided about $4500!  The winner of the 50/50 drawing gave them his winnings.  Eric was in the hospital on the day of the event.  But his wife came and gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone.  There were 3 of us on the planning committee, but we had all kinds of help from other boaters.  It was a great night.  

Amber thanking the crowd

                                             Adults acting like little kids playing this game

August 10-15, 2022 Oklahoma and Louisiana road trip to GA

 8-10 We had a late start for Oklahoma today after cleaning up after ourselves at Janice and Jim’s.  We spent the night in Council Bluff, Iowa along the interstate.  
8-11 We finished driving to OK today.  We stopped in Kansas and ate at an awesome taco truck.  We also bought corn on the cob that was borderline of being a little old.  But we hadn’t had any this summer.  We enjoyed it for dinner at my sister Bev’s home in Harrah, OK, a suburb of OKC.  
8-12 Bev is building a new home with her son Kevin.  She will have a 2 bedroom home attached to their home.  She has been storing a few of our things at her home.  We decided now would be a good time to move them to our storage unit.  We unloaded my cedar chest.  We took down three paintings and figured out how to package them with card board for traveling and storing.  We drove to their property to see the progress of the new home.  It was fun to walk through the lot and picture where the house will set.  From there we went to my favorite restaurant in the area, the Royal Bavaria German restaurant. Mya, the youngest daughter, came back to Bev’s and spent the night with us.  We found a scorpion on the kitchen floor.  That was a first one I had seen at Bev’s home.  

Dave, MaKenna, Mary, Kevin, Melanie, Macy, Mya, Beverly

8-13 It was noon by the time packed our belongings and headed southeast.  We planned to stop in Louisiana on the way back to Georgia.  We had a late lunch when we crossed into Texas at the Borderline restaurant.  I had a ribeye steak and Dave had catfish.  We saw one of their 18 ounce hamburgers go by.  The waitress said you can order them as a double or triple!!
I researched a Holiday Inn in Shreveport, LA to be near a church I could go to in the morning.  I think I will think twice about going to a city center in the future.  There were signs in the parking lot telling you to remove your valuables from the car.  Instead of leaving it at the back of the hotel by our door, Dave moved it near the front door where it would be more lit.  
8-14 Sunday morning.  No break in last night, our car was fine.  I went to mass at 8:00am at St John Berchmans Catholic Church.  Hadn’t hear of that saint. 

We drove to Breaux Bridge, LA for the night.  We wanted to hear some cajun/zydeco music   Most live music was on Friday and Saturday night.  But I found a dance hall that had music on Sunday afternoons.  We went to La Poussiere Dance Hall from 2:30 until 5:00 and had a ball.  You could tell it was where the locals would go.  The music was just what we were looking for.  And everyone was up and dancing all afternoon, which we enjoyed, too.  

 

 We asked for recommendations for dinner before we left.  We were directed to Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf.  “Take highway xxx and turn left when you hit the levee.”  Now that’s a landmark I haven’t used up until now.  We had an awesome dinner with an assortment of crawfish dishes.  The restaurant was sitting on a canal.  While we were there, we saw an alligator drifting down the canal that had to be 12 feet long!  After dinner, we drove along the levee and circled back to our hotel through the country side.  We were amazed at all the sugar cane that is grown in this area.  

 

 

 

8-15 We headed back to Georgia this morning.  We passed the Atchafalaya swamp and lake today.  Yesterday we had seen houseboats on the water.  So I did some research into coming back someday and renting one.  It looked beautiful and mysterious all together.  

 

We planned to stop in the Mobile Bay Area at another favorite restaurant, R&R Seafood on the Causeway east of Mobile at the top of the bay.  Our favorite there is crawfish, but the fresh ones are out out season.  We enjoyed raw oysters and crab claws, then mahi tacos and a fish dinner for our meals.  We drove on to Bonifay, FL that night and I swam in their outside swimming pool. Love it.