I should have created this map of our journey and posted it at the beginning, but better late than never.

Arrived in Asheville, NC around noon yesterday and had the afternoon to look around and shop a little. Didn't go thru the Biltmore mansion but saw it from a distance. That area is beautiful and we drove thru more gorgeous scenery today between Asheville and Corbin, Kentucky. The trees are just starting to turn in the Appalachians, more color the farther north we drove. Here are some "thru-the-windshield" photos - would have been more striking if the days hadn't been cloudy and drizzly.

We are staying in Corbin tonight - the home of the Colonel's first fried chicken restaurant. Tomorrow afternoon we will get to Rineyville for some kid and grandkid time!

My, but it's warm and humid in Savannah in September! I can't imagine what it must be like in July. We saw lots of the city - drove some, walked some, and rode a free city shuttle bus around. It's a very cool old city - different flavor than Charleston and doesn't seem as big. There are hundreds of wonderful old houses but very few of the huge pretentious mansions like we saw so many of in Charleston. There's a waterfront (river, not ocean) and a market area. We had a wonderful lunch at Belford's in the market area - ordered their two signature dishes and shared them. Listen to this:
     "Shrimp, Greens and Grits - wild Georgia shrimp sauteed with apple-smoked bacon. Served with crisp fried grit cakes, wilted collard greens and Chardonnay butter sauce. Topped with diced tomatoes, green onions and Parmesan cheese."
     "Belford's Award-Winning Crab Cakes - pan-seared premium lump crab cakes with lemon aioli and spiced tomato jam. Served with Savannah red rice and sauteed vegetables."

Unfortunately we were so hungry that we dug right in before we could take any photos. This will be our last splurge, our last coastal meal - tomorrow morning we start back toward home. Will spend the weekend driving up to Kentucky to spend a few days with Jen and family.

This is us parked on Skidaway Island State Park - a really cool campground in a forest of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss.

For Stormy, Hannah and Haileigh - this is the Low house, where Juliette Gordon Low lived when she founded Girl Scouts. It looks out on Lafayette Park (below) - Savannah is dotted with beautiful little parks every few blocks.

Another of the houses around Lafayette Park -

More of the many photos we took of the houses - a lot of our favorites were hard to take photos of because of all the trees and moss in front of them.

On some of the corners, the street signs are on the houses themselves -

This is the Old Savannah Cotton Exchange - at one time much of the cotton shipped from America came thru Savannah.

A beautiful day in Charleston! We walked and walked, then took a carriage ride, had lunch and walked some more.

Our horse was a Belgian draft horse, a former Amish farm horse named Luke, and our guide had a master's degree in history so gave us a wonderfully informative tour.

 This is 82 Queen, where we ate lunch - a 300-year-old building.

And this is the shrimp salad I had for lunch - shrimp here are nothing like the mushy frozen ones we get in Kansas! The salad had kiwi, mango, pickled ginger - it was delicious.

There are streets and streets full of wonderful old houses - we rubber-necked up and down many of them.

 The house above is on the market now for $9 million!

 All the houses had little shady gardens behind them and buildings that once held kitchens, stables, carriage houses and slave quarters.

The iron work on some of the houses is beautiful - you can actually buy jewelry with some of the designs from the fences, gates and doors.

 Charleston is called the Holy City because the whole skyline is steeples and no building is allowed to be taller than the tallest steeple. Many of the churches are from the 1700s and the cemeteries are fascinating. The stones are a genealogist's dream - not just the name and dates but parents' and spouses' names and everything the deceased ever did in his life.

This is as close as we got to Ft. Sumter - standing on the wall at the Battery looking across at it.

Tomorrow is another travel day - a little further south to Savannah, GA.

We had a very full, very fun day yesterday - I love the Outer Banks! The Roanoke Colony Festival Park was very interesting - there’s a museum, a replica of one of the ships that we could go all thru, and an Native American village and English settlement. It was all very hands-on - fantastic for kids.

After that we went to the Wright Brothers Memorial - another good museum with replicas of the glider they flew hundreds of times working out the mechanics of steering, etc, and the first plane they flew.

This is the Wright Bros' plane - one of them would lie on top of the lower wing next to that black cylinder which is the gas engine. Looks pretty flimsy, doesn't it!

Gary took this photo from the top of the sand dune that they launched their glider from. The two buildings are replicas of their hangar and the "camp" they lived in. The larger stone at the end of the long walk marks the place where the plane took off. The four stones to the right of that mark the length of the four flights they made that first day. The first flight was only 120 feet long, the last 852.

Stopped for a coffee and then started down the Outer Banks, headed for the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras. The OBX actually goes on farther than that but we didn’t have that much time. 

 Loved this cool house on the beach - it  used to be a Coast Guard rescue station but now is unused.

Another house I thought was cool. We couldn't believe the number of huge, million dollar houses in the areas that weren't part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore - they're miles and miles from anywhere so what do those folks do to earn those houses?

This is a shipwreck - a Civil War era steamship that went aground in the shallows offshore.

Finally made it to the Cape Hatteras lighthouse but too late to climb to the top (oh darn!) 

Stopped at a wildlife area on the way back north to get these photos of the beautiful sunset.

Really starving by the time we got back to town so we went to a place we had passed before called Big Al’s Diner - a 50's diner with a Coke decorating theme. I decided that would be my birthday dinner so I had coconut shrimp (which were amazing - put Red Lobster’s to shame!) and key lime pie.

Today was a driving day - after a stop at a huge Christmas shop!! We are spending the night in Wilmington, NC and will go on to Charleston tomorrow. May not post anything tomorrow night as it will just be another driving day.

Thursday we drove to Assateague Island, just south of Ocean City. Assateague is a barrier island that stretches from around Ocean City to way down in Virginia. Part of the Virginia end of the island is called Chincoteague, famous for the wild ponies, but the whole island has a population of horses. We spent quite a bit of time walking the beautiful beach.

We loved these little birds with the gull - they're called "peeps." They run down into the outgoing waves and peck at the wet sand for little bugs or something, then turn and run when the waves come back in. Their little legs move so fast that they're just a blur. I got a brief movie of them - maybe someday I'll figure out how to post it!


The rest of the island is scrubby and marshy - no wonder the horses are small - there’s not much for them to eat or drink! Had a PB&J picnic lunch and then we drove around for quite awhile looking for horses - finally found a few in an area that used to be a ferry landing. They’re pretty placid and used to people - I would have loved to see them running along the beach like in the movies!

This building was at the ferry landing where we saw the ponies - just thought it was cool.

On the way back from Assateague we spent some time in the quaint old town of Berlin - that’s BERlin, not BerLIN. It’s the town that “Runaway Bride” was filmed in. Hit several antique stores and found a few good mementos of our vacation. Ended the afternoon with ice cream made locally - it was delicious!

Today we hit the road again - drove south to the Chesapeake Bridge-Tunnel. It was amazing - 27 miles long, most of it bridge but with two mile-long tunnel sections to allow for the ship traffic above.

Kept driving into North Carolina and the Outer Banks - we are camped in a really nice spot on Roanoke Island. Tomorrow we will check out the Lost Colony and the Wright Brothers and drive as far south on the Outer Banks as we have time for. Here we are camped tonight on a little lake at a campground called The Refuge.

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Got to Ocean City and got all set up in plenty of time to head to the boardwalk. It was a beautiful evening and lots of people were enjoying walking along the boardwalk - eating junk food, buying t-shirts and jewelry, candy and ice cream. One man had 8 or 10 amazing kites flying at once. We had pizza for dinner and a funnel cake for dessert - no diet today!! On the way back to our campground we found a casino to top off the evening.

I’m a little behind on blogging - for the last couple of days I haven’t had much of an internet connection, even with my phone app. So here’s a catch-up blog.

Sunday we drove down south and explored for one last time. The Cove Point Lighthouse was open this time so we went in - couldn’t climb up in the lighthouse which was disappointing, but it has an open spiral staircase and they can’t afford the insurance to let folks up there. It would have been a beautiful view!

Monday we packed up and drove across the Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore. The bridge was amazing - the photo doesn’t really show how high and long it is because the major part of it curves away. Didn’t get here in time to do any sightseeing so chilled out for the evening. This RV park has cable TV so Gary was enjoying himself!.

Tuesday we went to Easton and St. Michael’s - two very picturesque old towns with a family connection. The weather forecast was for rain all day - and they were right. Alternated between sprinkles and downpours but we managed to get a lot done anyway. Found the cemetery in Easton where my Tydings great-grandparents are buried before the rain started. Both Easton and St. Michael’s are very interesting towns - wish we could have walked around, taken more photos and soaked up more of the atmosphere. We did manage to get quite a bit of souvenir shopping done both places and had a delicious lunch at Harrison’s on Tilghman Island - tried both kinds of crab soup (tomato-based and cream-based) and something we had never seen anywhere else - cheese and apple butter on crackers (it was very good!) By the time we got back to our RV, it was an absolute typhoon so we were glad to hunker down all evening. Today we are moving on again, to the Ocean City MD area on the coast.