BACK EAST TRIP -- IN NORTH CAROLINA

NORTH CAROLINA, FINALLY!

We are into our third week on the trip now, so we left Florida and headed to North Carolina on Tuesday, June 18th. As soon as we saw this sight below, I knew we were almost "home."

"South of the Border," an iconic landmark
along Interstate 95

"South of the Border" is a touristy destination that is located out in the middle of nowhere, just south of the South Carolina-North Carolina border. It is only about 20 minutes from Lumberton. Daddy and Momma used to take us to the restaurant there when we were little, for a nice evening out. There was a gift shop that we loved to look around in, and Daddy would usually buy us a stuffed animal to put on the bed. My bed was covered in stuffed animals! How I wish I had a picture of that now. The tower in the picture above is way bigger than the one that was there when we were little. I believe the old tower is still there, but I couldn't get a picture of it from the road.

Lumberton has a Starbucks now!

One of our first stops was the Starbucks in Lumberton. It was tea time for Linda and I was craving an iced coffee. Since we had always wanted Lumberton to get a Starbucks, but they didn't until after we moved away, we had to go there just to make sure it existed!

After we left Starbucks, we decided to ride over to see our house on 17th Street. We also went by the house on Walnut Street that our good friends Mike and Scott lived in while we were in Lumberton. They are our best buddies and Linda and I absolutely love them like the brothers we never had. All four of us had some really good times back in the day, at both of these houses. Linda and I bought this little (only a little over 900 sq.ft.) house when we put my parents' house on the market. It was definitely a fixer-upper, but we fell in love with it from the start. With the help of Mike and Scott, we managed to get it looking pretty good, both inside and outside. Linda and I loved this little house and would have taken it with us when we moved out to Yakima if we could have. As you can see in the video below, we loved to plant bushes and trees while there, and that hasn't changed since we moved to Yakima! It's interesting to notice that our house on 17th Street has grown into a jungle, but Mike and Scott's house on Walnut Street looks like the yard has been clear-cut, which is a crying shame because their yard was absolutely beautiful. I guess it all depends on what different owners of the house want it to look like.

Next, we decided to cruise by my parents' house on 14th Street. This is the house I grew up in since I was in the third grade. It was in a neighborhood with lots of children the same age as my sister and I were, so we loved living there.

We decided to spend our first night in Lumberton at a nearby motel, just so we could relax and unwind from the drive. The entrance to the Comfort Inn said it all:

I had been hankering for one of my favorite down-home Southern meals ever since we entered the South, but for some reason it hadn't materialized. So, on our first night in Lumberton we had supper at a nearby chain restaurant and I had the biggest piece of Chicken-Fried Steak I had ever seen!

Guess where we ate supper

LUMBERTON, DAY 1

On our first full day in Lumberton the first order of business was to go see my 89 year-old cousin, Patsy. I made my way to her house over the very familiar roads of my old hometown. Things had not changed much in the last twelve years, except for the fact that more landmarks of the past, like the lions in front of the McLean Mansion and the tobacco warehouse on Godwin Avenue, were gone. I pulled in Pat's driveway and was greeted at the door by Pat and her daughter, Lynn. We sat in her living room and chatted about the good times we used to have back in the day, and about relatives no longer with us. Before I knew it we had to say our goodbyes because I had a luncheon to attend. We hugged and Lynn took this picture of us.

My cousin Patsy and me

LUNCH IN PEMBROKE

As soon as we knew for sure we were going on this trip, I contacted a few people and scheduled a small lunch get-together in Pembroke. This is a small town about 15 miles from Lumberton, where I worked in the office of the Fleetwood Homes of North Carolina mobile home factory for 31 years. I saw a ton of people come and go through the office of that manufacturing plant over the years, and a lot of physical changes to the property. There were a lot of good times, but also a lot of not-so-good times. But on this day, we all gathered at a local restaurant and had a fantastic meal and some great fellowship. And, as an added bonus, Linda and I both got to get our fix of good ole southern BARBECUE!! If you've never had it, you just don't know what you're missing.

Lunch with dear friends

After lunch we all drove over to the plant. I had not seen it since we left in 2007, and it was kind of sad to see it with weeds all over the parking lot and the building looking run-down.

I'm standing in my old parking space

I always went in the back door (brown door behind me) because my office was right close to that door. My office was right beside my best buddy Sheila's office. We both operated out of the Sales Department back in the good times, and we had a lot of fun working down there with the "boys" (the plant's salesmen). I was the Sales Secretary and Sheila was the Dispatcher. Years later, due to a restructuring of the company, we would both be transferred out of Sales into the plant Operations department, where our titles became "OPC."  This stood for "Operations Process Coordinator." But Sheila and I preferred to say we just did "Other People's Crap."

My office buddy and best friend, Sheila,
standing beside the window in her office

The BEST of Fleetwood
Me (invoicing), Doug (production),
Sheila (shipping), Alexa (service)

The property is now vacant. But we managed to get a few pictures and then we stood around reminiscing about the good old days. Before too long the sun beating down on us was getting to be too much, so we hugged and said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, until next time. It was so good to see everyone, though. Like coming home.


We headed back to Lumberton, checked out of our motel and headed over to where we would be staying for the next few days...The Luther Henry Caldwell House.

The Caldwell House

Next week the blog will feature a tour of this historic old Queen Ann-style house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lumberton has lost a lot of the old houses like this to so-called "progress." We are thankful that the Caldwell House has been spared that fate! Tune in next week for lots of gorgeous pictures.

BACK EAST TRIP, PART 6

VISITING A GRAVE

Before we even started on this trip Back East, my sister and I each had compiled a list of things we wanted to do while we were in Jacksonville. One of the main things was to visit our maternal grandmother's grave. We never knew her because she died when she was just 41 years old and my mother was 13. On June 14th, Manners, Linda, and I set out for the Evergreen Cemetery (<---link) in Jacksonville. Unfortunately, Susan had to work that day so wasn't able to go with us. As soon as we got inside the cemetery, a huge owl swooped down in front of our car and landed in a nearby tree. Linda got out her camera and managed to get a shot of this magnificent creature. He stayed in that tree almost the entire time we were at the cemetery. It was a good omen.

Cemetery Owl

We parked the car and all got out to look for the gravesite. I had only been there once before, but I believe my sister had been there more often since she lives in Jacksvonville. After a few minutes of searching we found the headstone. It is sad that we never got to know this beautiful lady, whose photograph graces the walls of our living room in Yakima.

At our grandmother's gravesite

Elizabeth Agness Walters,
our maternal grandmother

After visiting the grave and paying our respects, we rode walked around the cemetery a bit more. As you know if you are a regular reader of this blog, Linda and I like to walk around cemeteries. Linda snapped this picture of a very interesting tree.

Wonder why this tree grew into this shape?

This cemetery was huge, though, and there were mosquitos very much present, so we eventually got into the car and rode around a while, and then returned to home base.

HANGING OUT

We had done so much the first part of our last week in Jacksonville that we decided to just relax around the house a bit. I took some more pictures around the yard and on our morning walks, we smoked some corn on my sister's smoker, grilled some fabulous hamburgers that Susan had made up, and basically just enjoyed each other's company.

Delicate little flowers seen on our walk

Polydamus Swallowtail

Some of our favorite Eastern birds
Mourning Dove, Blue Jay (top)
Cardinal, Red-Breasted Woodpecker (bottom)

During our stay in Jacksonville we had quite a bit of rain, with several big thunderstorms in the evening. All that rain meant that the grass grew at a fast rate, so Manners had to mow several times while we were there. Here she is in her mowing get-up, complete with headphones to listen to music!

Not everyone was on vacation while we were there!

Since cooking in one of my favorite things to do, I decided that we were going to have an Instant Pot Tutorial lesson while I was there. Manners and Susan had not used their Instant Pot yet, so it was a good opportunity to get them set up. Manners even filmed it on her phone!

I finally put my teaching skills to use!

We also got to meet a few more of the resident kitties. This fellow below is named Tangelo, also known as Mr. T, and he was such a love! We wanted to take him home with us, but I am sure Summer Girl would not have approved!

Tangelo

This sweetie below is Will, one of the outside kitties. His companion, Kate, is also outside but I wasn't able to get a picture of her. Can you guess who they are named for?

Outdoor kitty Will

We also got to witness Mimi putting on her favorite sweater. It was almost too much cuteness to bear! We wanted to bring her home with us, but Susan was having none of that and said she would fight us for her!

I'm so glad I got to get some pictures and video of my all-time favorite Eastern bird, the Northern Cardinal. I sat outside one hot day and got this video of a male chirping up in a tree.

OUR ONE BIG PROBLEM FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP

Remember way back when I posted my first blog about this trip, I mentioned that on our first day, as we got on the interstate outside of Yakima, I noticed the steering wheel on Linda's car was crooked. Well, that came back to haunt us on our last Saturday in Jacksonville. That day, on our way back from a shopping trip, we noticed a strange noise, almost like something was stuck underneath the car. Upon arriving back at the house, we checked all around the car and Linda finally noticed that the back tires had NO TREAD! These were brand new tires before we left home and they probably only had about 3,500 miles on them, so we could not believe the back tires were slick!

Slick tires

The crooked steering wheel was prophetic because we had driven all the way across the country with our tires out of alignment (which, by the way, was supposedly done when the new tires were put on). Anyway, we bought two new tires on Saturday and had them aligned on Monday, this time by someone who knew what they were doing. Don't worry, we got reimbursed for all this from the company who put the tires on. We were just thankful that nothing happened while we were unknowingly driving all the way across the United States with tires that were getting slicker by the mile.


BIRTHDAYS & FATHER'S DAY

Since the four of us hadn't been together for many years, we had missed out on celebrating our birthdays together. Since our last Sunday in Jacksonville also happened to be Father's Day, we decided to celebrate all of our birthdays then, and also pay tribute to our fathers who are no longer with us. We also wanted to pay tribute to our cousin Robert Harris, (<---link) who passed away last November.

Mimi got all dressed up in her stunning birthday dress for the occasion. Susan called her dad in Canada and chatted with him, as she is the only one of us lucky enough to still have her father around. We had a wonderful meal that night, plus some cupcakes for dessert. It was a good day.

PARTING SHOT (from Jacksonville)

Our last day in Jacksonville was spent getting the tires aligned on Linda's car and packing up all our stuff for our trip so we could head out bright and early the next morning to drive to Lumberton, NC. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Manners' and Susan's house and made plans to return in a couple of years. Oh, and those to-do lists that my sister and I made up? Well, we didn't get to do everything but we did check off most of the major items. We are already making up new lists for next time!

Goodbye from Mimi

Next week's blog will begin our visit in Lumberton. I imagine that will most likely take up a couple of blogs as I want to include a lot of pictures of where we stayed, the historic Luther Henry Caldwell House (<---link). So stay tuned for next week's blog!

BACK EAST TRIP, PART 5 ~~ 2nd WEEK IN JACKSONVILLE

Today's blog brings us to our second (and last) week in Jacksonville. After having rested up a lot during the first week, Linda and I were anxious to get out and do a few things. So, we all decided to take a little trip to do the touristy thing.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Wednesday, June 12th, we all piled into my sister's car and headed a bit further south. We had all been to St. Augustine before, but it is a very interesting, picturesque little town and not very far from Jacksonville, thus it was everyone's favorite choice. The weather was not the best we could have hoped for because it rained when we first arrived there. But that is the norm for Florida, you never know when it is going to rain. The rain only lasted an hour or so, but it had managed to cool things off a little. Then the sun came out and all was good. By then it was lunch time, so we checked out a few places before deciding on Meehan's Irish Pub & Seafood House. Just across from the pub was the famous Bridge of Lions (click here for article) which spans the Intracoastal Waterway. Linda snapped a picture of the bridge and a lovely flower right before we entered the restaurant.

The inside of the pub was decorated in your usual pub style, but was a nice respite from the mounting heat and humidity outside. Of course, I was still cold so I had a hoodie on!

After lunch we ventured back outside to explore the downtown area of this quaint old town. St. Augustine has managed to preserve many of the old landmarks from the time when this area was under Spanish rule. We strolled down St. George Street and visited many of the shops along the way. We walked through the old gates to the city, which were opened in 1739. The coquina pillars on each side of the gates were build in 1808. We also found the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse in the United States on this street.

Linda and I especially wanted to check out a place we had been to before when we first visited St. Augustine about 19 years ago. On that trip, we had come across a little pottery & ceramic shop and had purchased a beautiful ceramic sign of our house numbers for our little house in Lumberton. We wanted to get the same sort of sign for our house in Yakima. We found the store, Market to Market, and picked out our design. I believe it is going to look great on our house!

BIRDING DAY

One of the main things I wanted to do on this trip was to go birding with my sister. We are both avid photographers, having inherited that gene from our father. And we also both inherited the love of birds gene from our mother. So the next day we loaded up with our camera equipment and trekked off to visit some nature areas.

JACKSONVILLE ARBORETUM

First up on our outing was a trip to the Jacksonville Arboretum (click here for link), which is a huge (120 acres) woodland preserve right in the middle of Jacksonville. The natural surroundings there were very lush, almost as if we were in a jungle.

My sister and I took the Lake Loop Trail, which was an easy walk around a two-acre lake. The lake was surrounded by many trees and plants, with lots of blooming flowers along the trail.

We had hopes of seeing an alligator in the lake, as there were warning signs posted all around. But if there was one in there, we couldn't spot it. We did see some birds flying around and I got a video of this Green Heron.

We also saw a lot of these little guys (sound up).

Around the other side of the lake, we came across a turtle relaxing on a log. This is something we just don't see around Yakima, so I was quite excited.

After our walk around the lake, we decided to move on as we had a couple more areas we wanted to visit. We could have spent all day at the Arboretum, but I was anxious to see some of the places that my sister and my cousin Rob used to go to whenever they took a photography road trip. So, we got back in the car and headed for Cedar Point.


CEDAR POINT

As soon as we turned off the main road onto the driveway to Cedar Point we saw this guy plodding along right beside the driveway. I jumped out of the car and had to take his picture. This is a Gopher Tortoise (click here for link). Apparently they are very common in Florida but, big surprise, there are none in Yakima.

This lovely spot is a part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, and also is part of the Timucuan Parks Foundation, which supports no less than 23 preservation parks in the greater Jacksonville area. Cedar Point (click here for link) is located at the tip of Black Hammock Island, on the edge of salt marshes. The surrounding area here was similar to the Arboretum, but was more "wild" in the sense that it was not as much a planned and maintained environment as the Arboretum.

As you can imagine, there were many water birds there. We saw Sea Gulls, several different types of Herons, and a new bird for me to add to my life list, the Roseate Spoonbill. Below is a video of this beautiful bird taking flight. (This video features another example of my original music).

After seeing this magnificent bird, we walked around to a dock beside the boat launch. The tide was out so we could see countless little Fiddler Crabs, digging holes in the mud and fighting each other for their territory.

We met a couple and their dog and briefly chatted with them, then left Cedar Point and continued on our journey to Pumpkin Hill.

PUMPKIN HILL

After a short drive we came to Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park (click here for link), where we encountered a habitat very similar to the one at Cedar Point. We saw some of the same types of birds, but also noted an Osprey circling in the distance, searching for food. The Heron was the bird of the day at this spot. This one Heron was walking along the shoreline when he happened upon a school of fish. You can see the fish churning up the water as they try to escape. He caught several for his lunch while we watched!

Herons looks so majestic when they fly. They are such big birds and sometimes look awkward when they walk, but in flight they are very graceful.

We left this particular part of Pumpkin Hill and drove a short distance to another area. Crossing the main road, we came to a very different kind of habitat, one with an abundance of Saw Palmetto trees. This is the most common palm tree in the US and is a tree native to Florida. In this picture below, the Saw Palmettos are the low-lying trees in the foreground...they look more like bushes than trees.

We were on a search for more Roseate Spoonbills, but before we got too far we had to turn back because of an approaching storm. We high-tailed it back to the car on double-time and as we were just leaving the parking lot, the bottom fell out. Let me tell you, I haven't been in a downpour like that since we moved out West. You could barely make out the road, and I was very thankful that I wasn't driving! And so we ended our bird photography road trip, a very rewarding experience.

I had planned to make this blog incorporate our entire second week, but since I had so many pictures and videos, I have decided to continue our second week in Jacksonville on the blog next week. So tune in then to see how we wound up our visit in Florida!

BACK EAST TRIP, PART 4 ~~ 1st WEEK IN JACKSONVILLE

BACK EAST TRIP, PART 4  ~~  1st WEEK IN JACKSONVILLE (June 04 - June 10)

WELCOME TO FLORIDA

Nothing is more Floridian than flamingos. They are definitely a "thing" everywhere you go in Florida, maybe because there are a lot of them there, especially in the southern parts of the state. Most of the flamingos in Florida have wandered in from Mexico, Cuba, or the Bahamas, as they are now not considered to be native to the state. But they once were referred to as a native bird, and there is a concerted effort to have them re-instated (read article here). Whether they are native or not, it doesn't matter because they are everywhere, although a lot of them are not real.

The day after we arrived in Florida, we were so tired of driving that we just hung around the house and relaxed. I sat outside on the front steps for a few minutes and listened to the cicadas singing. Linda snapped this picture of me and the welcoming committee.

We all had a good time getting reacquainted with each other since it had been so many years in between visits. Linda and Susan (my sister's partner) formed a special bond, I believe, probably because they have to put up with me and my sister.

My sister has gone by the nickname "Manners" since high school. Her actual name is Linda, but it comes in handy that she uses her nickname more often than not, because with two Lindas in the same house, it can get confusing!

Manners & Mimi

FAMILY INTRODUCTIONS

Last week I showed you a picture of Indigo, one of my sister's cats. In addition to Indigo and the other twelve (!) cats, they also have two dogs, Mimi and Hannah. Linda and I were both excited to finally get to meet our little "neice," Mimi. We had seen numerous pictures and videos of her, but it wasn't like meeting her in person. And let me tell you, she is a cutie. She doesn't look so small in pictures, but in person she truly is tiny. And so sweet!! We both immediately fell in love with her, although I am not sure the feeling was mutual. Here she is giving me the eye, dressed up in one of her many sweaters. This little girl has more clothes than I do!

Mimi

Their other dog, Hannah, is not quite so tiny, but she is a sweetheart as well. She is also quite a bit older than her little sister.

Hannah

Indigo was the only cat we had much interaction with because he was the most social one. Here is a picture of him with his mommy Susan.

Indigo and Susan

SURROUNDED BY BEAUTY

After we met all our new relatives, we decided to look around the place a bit and see what was happening. I anticipated lots of beautiful flowers and critters, since we were, after all, in Florida. I was not disappointed. Here is a sampling of some flowers & lizards we saw at my sister's house and in the surrounding area.

Mr. Cardinal took a tour of the back yard at one point. He was so excited to be back in his native range in the East, instead of being out West where there are no Cardinals.

My favorite spot to take pictures and video of the birds was in the kitchen, since it was cool and had a good view of the bird feeders. I did sit outside and take pictures a few times, but let's face it, why not do it from inside where the A/C is?

I especially wanted to be inside when I was trying to shoot the Cardinals because they are somewhat skittish and reluctant to go to the feeders while someone is sitting outside on the patio. In the photo above, I'm shooting out the kitchen window to capture this video below. I left the soundtrack on the video so you could hear our comments. My sister and I were delighted to see this:

Early morning was the best time to get pictures and video because that's when the most birds seemed to visit the feeders to eat breakfast. I was so happy to get video of a Carolina Wren and both a female and a male Downy Woodpecker at the suet feeder.

I don't know how many of you have seen a cicada up close. They look like the biggest fly you have ever seen in your life. But if you look closer, you can really see their beauty. When they emerge from their nymph stage (which looks like a beetle-type bug), they are bright green, but that color soon fades. However, they retain hints of the green in their coloring. This guy posed for me to take his picture, and then he started singing, so I got video of that. The video is a big shaky because the wind was blowing the branch around a bit, but you can see his lower abdomen vibrating if you look closely. This is how they produce their song.

Cicada

Lizards have always been one of my favorite critters, maybe because they are so colorful and they help in keeping the bug population down. They always fascinate me when they display their dewlap, the colorful flap of skin beneath their head and neck (read article here). My mother used to call that their "blankie" and she would sing a little song whenever we would see this behavior, "Lizard, lizard, show your blankie!"

All was not just fun and games with bugs and lizards, we did manage to venture out a few times. We visited a local theater nearby in hopes of seeing the movie "Rocketman," but alas, they were sold out. Still, Linda managed to get a picture of three of us in a small park across the street.

Thus ends our first week in the big city. I had the opportunity to do one of my favorite things, which was a ton of cooking for more than two people for a change. We rested up from our long trip and took a few walks down memory lane. There were still adventures to come in our second week, so check back again next week to see what happened!