Tonight I get a very late start after a fine evening with a lifelong friend. I only hope I can stay awake to fulfill my obligation to our readers. You know we are quickly approaching 45,000 hits on our little website and we owe it all to each of you, our loyal cyber crew.
As soon as we exited the Ogeechee River this morning on a rising tide we had to pass through “Hell’s Gate”, a narrow and sometimes trecherous channel connecting the Ogeechee to the Little Ogeechee. Lucky for us it was calm and two other boats went through with us and experienced no problems.
We have seen many shrimp boats during our voyage but this is the first one with net booms out and working in a river.
South Florida has its beautiful and sometimes gawdy homes but the approach to Savannah shows that Georgia’s homes can be just as beautiful and display a more quiet elegance.
Some causes will never die.
I believe this is where President Obama keeps his boat. I say that because I saw one named “Fleeced” in the harbor.
Some of Georgia’s oldest river homes lie hidden behind the oaks that line the Isle of Hope waterway.
We chose to bypass Savannah as we have had many visits to the city in recent years but tomorrow I will post a few pictures we shot of the sights along the ICW as we went through.
Hilton Head Island was another wonderful playground we bypassed this time. Jan had owned a condominium there and we covered the island thoroughly two years ago while trying to buy a boat there.
We gazed upon Parris Island where the United States Marines train the world’s finest to serve from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.
We were met at the dock in downtown Beaufort, SC by one of my oldest and dearest friends, Charles Moore. He brought along his good friend Zach.
Charlie greeted us with lei’s and whisked us off to his beautiful vacation home for a dinner of steak and grilled shrimp with stone ground cheese grits and buttermilk pie for dessert. When we were roomates in college I do not remember him ever cooking anything that did not come out of a can.
When I say lifelong I mean just that. Charlie and I were members of the same church and Boy Scout troop. We went to elementary, junior high, high school and college together. We joined the same fraternity and I became president and he became treasurer. We both went off to law school together and he along with the Commander account for over 110 years of friendship. My mother had a sign in our kitchen: “Make new friends, keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold.” Charlie is one of the golden ones.
Tomorrow we will have a busy day and I will try to get some sleep. You do the same.
