This ain't Florida....Is it?

Ahhh! The mountains of North Carolina!

Such a respite from the lowlands. To be at 3300' elevation

with the cool breezes blowing up the valley, through the sliding

doors and into the cabin, cooling the house almost to the point

of needing a fire to ward off the chill. The beautiful flora of the highlands.

The cozy bed with thick comforter against the chill of the night.
Lovely!

Calm and serene.

Cozy and warm.

Picturesque.

And now, the rest of the story.

It was hot. Real hot.

It had been a while since we had been to Franklin and I thought it

would be a good idea to go over and weedeat and blow everything off.

It really wasn't that bad. It was about 80 degrees and there was a

slight breeze blowing up from the valley. I turned on the fan over the

bed when I went to sleep and by morning I had to turn it off because

it was too much. It didn't take it long though, come morning, for it to

warm up. I had the hard work done though so it was just a matter of

shutting things down and leaving. Chad and his family are going next

weekend (brave souls) and that's good. A house needs to be lived in.

In the meantime though I'll keep it up best I can. Anybody want to

spend a weekend in Franklin? Come on Trixie. Let's go home. We'll

come back when it's cool enough that you feel like romping around the deck.

A Week Away

I thought this might be a good time to wrap up a week spent in St. Augustine that was supposed to be more than just Bekah, Tyler and myself. Kenita was unable to go because of back problems which will be addressed soon, and because Bekah has classes this was the only opportunity she would have to go South this Summer. The pelican above followed us for over half a mile at 28 mph on one of the days we spent fishing on th ICW. He seemed to want to stay with us as we traveled up the waterway. Below is a picture of a manatee which was one of a "herd" of them we came upon that day. They weren't giving us a lot of skin to take pictures of but we did see one that had been hit by a propeller. The cut was real pink in color.

After taking the boat out we took it to the local car wash to clean it and happened across this little family of ducks. Mama Duck was hissing at me as I took the picture. She was moving her brood away from the mean old human but I was just trying to get a decent picture.

A few pictures of the place in St. Auggie...

We thought seriouly about taking the boat out in the bay for the Fourth of July fireworks show but decided against it since I've never navigated in the dark. We drove in as close as we could and rode bikes into town. Although we regretted not going in the boat, it was probably the best thing because getting out of town was a lot easier on bikes than it would have been in the boat.

When we first got downtown there was a military band in the plaza and they were fantastic.

There were a lot of boats in the bay, too.

Since we got there so early, we rode the bikes around town for a while. This picture and the next two were taken beneath the Tiffany windows of the Flagler College dining hall. I just looked up as we were leaving and this shot presented itself.

Odd man out...

Ah...young love!

Odd man out redeux...

Casa Monica at dusk.

Morons at dusk.

And...some of the show...

I have to say, it was the best fireworks show I've ever seen, especially the last three minutes. The finale was awesome. Just a constant, solar plexus pounding show.