Georgia - Florida - Georgia Part 1

What an amazing family filled, friend filled, activity filled, memory reflecting and memory making trip this was. I'm sure it will take several posts and not necessarily chronologically accurate to share this trip that I had the privilege of sharing with family and friends old and new.

When my son Jeff told me that they were having a graduation/graduation/birthday party for my granddaughter Allison I knew that I wanted to be there. The good news was that my daughter and her family and Jackie were also planning to go.

The Catalyst - High School and Junior College Graduation & 18th Birthday

In the past couple of years as documented in previous blogs I have been able to reconnect with some of my oldest friends and two of them who never came home from the south, Clarence and Fred and I have been talking about wanting to get together, the first time the three of us have been together since 1968. This trip was the perfect opportunity for that reunion and it was a fantastic time together catching up, reminiscing and meeting Fred's family. I started on June 2nd staying in San Francisco at a Park and Fly hotel because I had to be at the airport at 3:30 on the morning of the 3rd for my 5:50 flight to Atlanta. In Atlanta I picked up my rental car and drove to Athens to stay with Clarence. The plan was to stay in Athens to celebrate Clarence's 67th birthday on the 4th. We visited a lot of places that I had visited before and I met even more of Clarence's friends from the 32 years he has lived in Athens.

The first night after spending some time visiting downtown we walked to a place where they have really good pizza. The name of the place has a special meaning to all of us from our group of friends. The next day after I took Clarence (JR in Athens) to breakfast for his birthday at where else? Waffle House! After that I went for a run near his house and had a good dose of southern humidity but it was a beautiful run.

 While JR spent part of the day running around doing errands to get ready for our road trip I spent some quiet time sitting and reading in his back yard. He has been doing a lot of work to make it a beautiful place to relax and listen to an amazing number of birds.

That night Clarence decided to grill and we just hung out and relaxed before hitting the road the next morning for Cocoa Beach. Clarence had gone there with me two summers ago and we were looking forward to getting back. If the first 30 hours of this trip was any indication it was going to be a good time.