Month: October 2018

October 19, 2018

Today was another beautiful fall day in South Carolina. After another great breakfast and time of visiting, Debra and Anne went to the church to help pack Christmas bags for the students at an elementary school in the area. The school was chosen because the students are from an economically depressed area with all but 3% of the students qualifying for free lunches. Some of the ladies had already acquired the items and arranged them on tables. We worked today to get everything into the bags and then seal the bags. The church will be providing 500 bags for the school. Not only do they do the Christmas bags, they also provide school supplies at the beginning of the year, hygiene items year round, two books per student at the end of the year for summer reading as well as food packs each weekend for a lot of students. Such a good ministry and Anne was so glad she was able to go assist on this project.

After completing their work at the church Anne and Debra stopped by the grocery store and then back home for a late lunch with the guys.

After lunch and a rest break the four of us went to the Wild Turkey Center of the National Wild Turkey Federation headquarters located just a few miles from the house. Who knew? Evidently it’s a pretty big deal. Randy drove a bus for a group to visit the museum several months ago and discovered there are at least 6 different walking trails, free for anyone to use. Today we didn’t visit the museum but it is suppose to be full of information on the reintroduction of wild turkeys into the wild. Max remembers riding along on the tractor and wagon with his grandfather many decades ago and releasing wild turkeys in the woods in Blount County as part of the repopulation program. We were interested in hiking the trails and getting some exercise today. We will have to visit the museum another day. The trails were in good shape and through nice wooded areas. There are lakes, butterfly habitats, and other specialty areas. We enjoyed hiking about 2.5 miles of trails and would definitely return to hike the others another day. Today we needed to get on home to start dinner and nope, we didn’t see a single turkey.

Our niece and nephew, Dave and Jennifer, came over for dinner. They both worked today and we appreciated their putting forth the effort to come for a visit. Great to see and visit with them! We all probably ate too much but dinner was so good and the fellowship even better. It’s been a great few days visiting and makes us a little sad to be leaving, but tomorrow we will move on to Lumberton, NC to get back to work.

Thursday, October 18, 2018

It was nice and cool last night and we slept with the windows open. First time in a long while we have been able to enjoy the night air and not noise from air conditioners. Of course the rig was quite chilly this morning and we actually cut the fireplace on to knock the chill off. It was a beautiful fall day in Johnston.

What a fun day we have had. It started with a wonderful breakfast of french toast with Randy and Debra and then a little while later we went on a nice walk on the Ten Governors’ Rail-Trail. The trail is about a one mile paved trail along Slade Lake, that commemorates each of Edgefield’s 10 Governors with a stone maker for each governor each 0.10 mile. Interesting that there have been 10 South Carolina governors that were from Edgefield. The trail winds around Slade Lake, over quiet streets and neighborhoods, a soccer field and an old railroad trestle. There’s also a fishing dock and lighting for evening walks. There is a new extension that gives additional length to the walk and it appears they are working on extending it even more. We had a nice walk.

After the walk we stopped at Cook’s produce stand. It’s Debra’s favorite and we could see why. She brought some produce we will enjoy tomorrow and we bought a jar of scuppernong preserves. Hopefully we will enjoy it on biscuits one morning soon.

This evening we went to a local restaurant, The Red Shed Diner, that was new to all of us. It appeared to have started life as a produce stand but now is a popular local restaurant in Graniteville, SC. Its fare was that of a diner, serving meat and three, vegetable plates and sandwiches. They also have wonderful deserts, service very large portions.

After dinner we drove on over to Aiken, SC to see a production of “The Odd Couple, Female Version” at the Aiken Community Theatre. It was opening night of Neil Simon’s revision of his hugely successful play. The lead characters were transformed from Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, into Olive Madison and Florence Unger. The play was funny and well done. We had a great day with our family.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

A nice sleeping night last night. Love to sleep to the sound of rain on the roof. However, we were planning on leaving about an hour earlier than we did. We delayed because it was raining hard when we got up and we didn’t want to play in the rain, disconnecting electrical and hooking up the truck. We stopped in Oneonta to top off the propane because it just might be cold before we get back home. We then headed to the interstate and drove I-20 all the way to exit 5 in South Carolina. The medians of the interstate shortly after entering Georgia were beautiful with flowers today. We stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center to stretch our legs and found a new geocache. Traffic through Atlanta was unusually light. Surprise! The remainder of the drive was uneventful.

It was great to arrive in Johnston at Randy and Debra’s to spend a few days with them. Debra has some fun things planned for us but mostly we will just enjoy spending time with them. We are thankful for safe travel today and so blessed to have time with family. We will see what we can get into tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

As we expected, today was a rainy day. So glad we loaded most things in to FRED yesterday and planned today for a cooking day. The main items left to load were kitchen/refrigerator items. We like to start trips with some things cooked ahead. This morning we made some breakfast bowls to have in the freezer for work mornings. We also cooked some biscuits to have ready to warm up for sausage biscuits. Later in the day it was time for our favorite, tea cake cookies. We use Aunt Inez’s recipe with some slight modifications. We have been asked for this recipe many times so here it is: Aunt Inez’s Tea Cake Cookies. These are good cookies! We cook them in the convection oven and at the house can cook three cookie sheets at a time. Can’t cook them that fast FRED but probably would only make half the recipe in FRED. Hope you try and enjoy them.

Other than that we did the last of the laundry, cleaned the house and finished loading FRED. Tonight we are back in FRED and ready to roll. We got a lot accomplished in the few days we were home but now it’s time to get on the road again.