Georgia - Florida - Georgia - Part 6

The first night at Fred and Leah's Georgia home was a definite indication of what we could expect for the duration of the visit. Good food, good wine, good friends, and good music just for starters. After we got back from the river and got settled in we went to eat at an all you can eat southern food buffet. It was amazing, so many good things to choose from that I had to eat two plates and didn't even make a dent in the selections that were available. We met Fred's daughter Jill (Stacey) and her family for dinner. And yes, that is fried okra!!!

When we returned to the house we put 60's music on satellite radio and left it on until late into the night when we finally called it quits. It seemed that almost every song brought up a shared memory from almost 50 years ago when we all hung out together as well as our time together in boot camp and beyond. It turns out that Fred and Leah make their own wine and it was delicious. As Fred went through all the steps of preparing it after opening it I jokingly said, "dang, from cheap drunk to sommelier". It was good for a good laugh and opening the floodgates for another round of stories. It still amazes me how much life we jammed into what was really a very small part of our life; time wise that is. At the time it was a very important part of our lives and we obviously made lifelong friendships.

I texted these pictures to Stacie and she texted us back a toast!

The next morning I made sure to get out on a run because I had a race at the end of the week and I knew that the party would just continue as long as we were there. It started out raining lightly when I left the house and I was in a total downpour when I returned. Fortunately it was a warm rain. I ran the majority of the run right down the middle of the road keeping an eye out for snakes and alligators in the ditches. Additionally, I was on the alert for bears. Right before I stepped off the porch to begin my run Leah shared a story about the neighbor getting a picture of a mother and her two cubs at the next house up the road. So now it was, Gators and Snakes and Bears, Oh My! Fortunately other than the rain the run was uneventful.

That second night we went on the Saint Mary's River with everyone on Fred's pontoon boat. We took the boat to a sandy area on the Florida side of the river and had a picnic and swam with the gators. We obviously didn't see any gators, one reason because the water is literally black even though it is clean. The river is completely swamp fed. In other words, anything that lives in the swamp has open access to the river we were swimming in and in another post I will show some pictures of what lives in the swamp.

When we left the beach we went east on the river towards the ocean to a rope swing that they knew about. Jill's two older girls went off the swing and then I decided that I would. You had to climb up a tree on some two by fours that were nailed to the tree and that was hard on the feet. Then you had to try to reach as high as possible on the rope to make sure that you cleared the tree when you swung out to drop into the river. So far, so good. Unfortunately, it has been many years and many additional pounds since I last did a rope swing and my arms were shocked by the drop with all that weight and I basically just slid down the rope over knots and almost tearing the little finger on my right hand open. Fortunately Clarence was videoing it and he missed the actual swing so this confession is the only documentation that it actually happened.

After the river we went back to the house, turned the music on and the reminiscing resumed.