Prologue
What we are doing, and why we're doing it!Natural Bridges N.P. - 5/12/05
Petrified Forest N.P. - 4/30/05
As we continued south from Charleston, the landscapes took on a distinctly southern appearance. While we were still on the on the Carolina lowlands, we started to see native palm trees interspersed among the salt marshes, pine trees, and moss draped oak.
While the mid-Atlantic seaboard would be a wonderful place to linger if one had a boat and loads of time, we were starting to feel our supply of time for this adventure run thin. We needed to find a place to settle before the spring semester started, and we wanted to stop to visit family for Thanksgiving.
While there are lots of interesting places in the Carolinas, there aren't any metropolitan areas near the coast that looked like they had the right combination of schools, jobs and reasonably prices housing. In fact, there aren't really any costal metropolitan areas other than Charleston and Savannah.
We did stop in Savannah, but for some reason, didn't get any pictures. We did take pictures, there simply isn't any trace of them. Savannah is Charleston's twin sister. They aren't identical twins, but they share the same exclusive charm that grew from the same social and economic roots.
Our detour inland through Georgia to have Thanksgiving with the Pelleys was wonderful. We feasted, visited, feasted some more, and toured the local area including Ft. Benning where Kevin is Captain of the local Military Police. We also got a chance to get to know Gabriel, who's as cute as can be, and smart as a whip. It was good to see that they are doing well.
Having eaten to wretched excess, it was time to move on. We had roughly a month to find a place to settle and get the kids enrolled in school. Washington DC and Norfolk both looked like they might work, but we wanted to have a good look at Florida before deciding where to settle.