Tybee Island, GA, 4-10 May

Okay, back after a great vacation in Georgia outside of Savannah on Tybee Island. I have saved a slide show in the margin, if you want to see an overview of our adventure.

Sunday - we drove to Atlanta and had dinner with my cousin Michelle and her husband, Jeff. Sadly, it had been six years since I had seen Michelle. My own fault. I don't get to Atlanta much anymore since my "territory" changed at work. Their house is great [makes me miss my own] and our dinner was fab!

Monday - we drove to Tybee Island, GA and I picked Mike up from the airport later that night. The Smokey / Appalachian Mountains were beautiful ... in the rain. And all-in-all, it was not a bad drive. We stopped at a road side restaurant in Tennessee to have lunch. It felt good to NOT have fast food and to sit down ... even though we were sitting all along on the drive.

The cottage that we had at Tybee Island [which is in Georgia, even though I have somehow convinced myself was in South Carolina, was 1930s bungalow, not unlike my house in Kentucky. It had a huge wrap around porch. Basically, I was at home!

After I picked up Mike, he and I stopped at the Sting Ray for a couple of drinks and to catch up. it closes, by the way, when the last customer leaves. Gotta love that.

Tuesday - we started the morning with a walk on the beach. The tide was out, so the beach was unusually ... large. Really hard to describe. We kept finding star fish left ashore because of the receding tide. It reminded me of the last year I was in Kentucky ... I used this story and a starfish give-away for the Account Advisers that came through Louisville for training:

A man was walking along a deserted beach at sunset. As he walked he could see a young boy in the distance, as he drew nearer he noticed that the boy kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things into the ocean.

As the man approached even closer, he was able to see that the boy was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time he was throwing them back into the water.

The man asked the boy what he was doing, the boy replied,"I am throwing these washed up starfish back into the ocean, or else they will die through lack of oxygen. "But", said the man, "You can't possibly save them all, there are thousands on this beach, and this must be happening on hundreds of beaches along the coast. You can't possibly make a difference."

The boy smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "It makes a difference to this one."

Wednesday - Mike and I took a ride in a ... or on a ... sea kayak. We paddled out to Cockspur Island Lighthouse that was built on an oyster bed. It was pretty cool, but no place that you could go without shoes!

On our way, we saw a family of dolphins, which Mike announced was a shark. Hello-? Not so excited about chasing a shark in the water, but dolphins, okay.

We also took a leisurely paddle [with the current and against the wind] up the Savannah River and saw thousands of Fiddler craps ... they have very large claws on one side. From the kayak, they look like roaches, to be honest.

That night we went to Savannah to have dinner at Uncle Bubba's Oyster House in Savannah. It was a restaurant with a big deck set on the Savannah River overlooking the water-way and docks. After that, we went to watch a single A professional league baseball game, the Savannah Sand Gnats vs. the Asheville Tourists [NC]. The Gnats won in the 9th inning, 2 outs with a home run. CMTSU!

Thursday - after dropping Mike off at the airport in the morning [and me taking at 2 hour conference call], Mom & Dad and I did a tour of Savannah on the Old Town Trolley Tours. The best way to see any city is on a bus, and that's what we did. One of the first things we saw on the tour was the bench where Tom Hanks sat, telling a story [okay the bench wasn't there], and the church tower where the feather was released for the movie, "Forest Gump".

We had lunch on the river front [not a lot going on down there] and we did see where Paul Dean's, The Lady & the Sons Restaurant was located, though we didn't go. Savannah was beautiful and I was surprised to learn that it was only 150,000 people. I was also amazed by the fact that so much of the history was tied to the UK.

- Juliette Gordon Low birthplace = she started the Girl Scouts; married to a Brit

- Six Pence Pub - where Julia Roberts caught her husband in, "Let's Give Them Something To Talk About"

- The Pirate's House - the place where British and other pirates alike came to rest

- The Celtic Cross Monument - 50,0o0 [of the 150,000] claim to be Irish

Friday - On Friday, we went to visit some Tybee Island staples. First, Fort Pulaski. Fort Pulaski National Monument is located between Savannah and Tybee Island, Georgia. It preserves Fort Pulaski, notable as the place where, during the American Civil War, in 1862, the Union Army successfully tested a rifled cannon. The success of the test rendered brick fortifications obsolete. The fort was also used as a prisoner-of-war camp.

After that, we headed into town to visit the Tybee Island lighthouse. In 1732, General James Oglethorpe, Governor of the 13th colony ordered construction of a lighthouse on Tybee Island to safely guide mariners into Savannah harbor. The original lighthouse was first completed in 1736.

The latest incarnation of the Tybee Island lighthouse stands at 154 feet and in 1933 became an electrically driven lighthouse. Because modern marine navigation techniques outgrew the need for such a lighthouse, the Tybee Island lighthouse became obsolete.

Today the Tybee Lighthouse is a popular tourist destination, having all of its support buildings on the 5-acre site historically preserved.

On the beach, there was a sand sculpting contest going on. I could see the activity on the beach from the lighthouse. Before going to the beach, we decided to wait until is was a little cooler [92 degree out today]. That might have been a mistake. We got to see some of the sculptures when we went to the beach around 6:00, and we weren't the only one that thought about going down after the crowds were gone. I'm guessing that by the looks of the sculptures that were left that the theme was Greek gods.

Afterwards, we headed to the top of the island for dinner at Cafe' Loco where we also sat in the with band, literally. There was a band setting up to play for the night, and I kid you not, I was leaning on a speaker. The owner was determined to have us sit down and have dinner, and of course, service was slow, so although we could have eaten and been out, as it was we were there when the opening band started playing. The sound guy was nice enough to turn the speaker off that I was leaning on. We stayed for a couple of rock-a-billy songs and then headed out.

Saturday - At first light on Saturday morning, I headed out to the beach for some sunrise pictures. Funny thing happened to me on the way to the beach, a black bird was swooping over me back-and-forth and taking a peck at my head as I crossed the street from town to the beach. I have no idea why. Dive-bombed by a bird!

The beach had a few folks, a few birds and few types of crab making their way along the shore. Take a look at the photos I have running in the margin if you want to see more.

I dragged Mom & Dad into town for tacky souvenir shopping. I scored a couple of doozies that I brought back to my colleagues here in the UK ... that all looked at me strangely like, why would you buy these? That's the point, isn't it? I have not seen any souvenir shops in vacation / holiday spots that compare.

For dinner on Saturday night we went to The Crab Shack, where the elite eat in their bare feet! This place was big and loud and full of "stuff". It was pretty cool. The tables had a raised platform in the middle where tin-foil lined platters were placed and hole below where you could drop you shrimp peels directly into a trash can. The house specialty was Low Country Boil. "Low Country" referring to this area of Georgia and South Carolina. And "Boil" refers to the local shrimp & craw fish tails, potatoes, corn and sausage. They also had a pit of American Alligators that you could feed. The place was deck-after-deck, screened-in-porches, outside boardwalks, and so on. They did a LOT of business.

Sunday - Mother's Day and time to pack up and make our way back to the Mid-West. We stopped somewhere in South Carolina along the way for a little bar-be-que; I think it was called Little Pigs Barbecue. I think Mom & Dad had had enough seafood to last them for a while.

We made our way all the way to London, KY, about 150 miles East of Louisville and stayed the night. How appropriate is that? We treated Mom to a mom's day dinner at Shiloh's which the hotel said was the best place in town!

Monday - we made it to Louisville and parted our ways. I spent just one night in Louisville and then flew back to London. Mom & Dad made it the rest of the way to St. Louis. What a great trip!

Oaks & Derby 2009

Okay, this was fun. The weather was great for the Oaks on Friday, 1 May and the crowd turned out for it! I guess it was the 2nd largest Oaks Day ever, drawing a crowd of 104,867. The Kentucky Oaks is a stakes race for three-year-old Thoroughbred fillies held on the Friday before the Kentucky Derby. The race currently covers 1⅛ miles (1811 m) at Churchill Downs; the winner gets a $500,000 dollar purse and a garland of lilies.

This year's winner Rachel Alexandra who won by 20 1/4 lengths. The jockey was Calvin Borel.

One other thing about the Oaks this year, the theme was pink as the track turned out to support breast cancer awareness. I did my best to comply! I brought my hat and Mary Therese's "fascinator" from London [doesn't look just facinating-?].

There was a crowd of us that got together. We drove down with MT and Dinger and their friend, Pierre [in from Boston]. And we stopped on the way to renew my driver's license [yep, I'm not kidding!]. While looking for a place to park, we came across Erica and Matt, and then on the front lawn of the yard we parked I saw Janice. Inside the park, Laura was in from Indy and she brought along Jackie. Jyl and Damon also had tickets and joined us all down in section 128 ... where we didn't see a single race, but we had fun. The sun came out and anything that was outside the perimeter of my hat, got burned!

After the track, I joined Jyl & Damon, Laura, Jackie & her husband [whose name escaptes me], Rhonda, and Martha [in from Cincy] for dinner at Bristol's. Green chili won tons! My favourite!

On Saturday, we had tickets for the Derby, but of course, Mother Nature was not going to be so cooperative. It rained heavily the night before and morning of the race, so the track was wet and sloppy. Interestingly, many of the horses running that day had never run on dirt having come from California where the tracks are made out of a polymer.

The favourite up until race day was I Want Revenge ... who scratched on Saturday morning due to some swelling in his leg.

Mine That Bird was the winner of 135th Kentucky Derby running ... ridden by jockey, Calvin Borel ... the same jockey that won the Oaks! This 2009 win is the second time in three years that Calvin Borel has ridden the winner of the Kentucky Derby; he rode Street Sense to a win in 2007. In fact, Mine That Bird, a 3-year-old gelding, went from worst to first, literally. Calvin Borel held him back, biding his time in last place until room opened along the rail, then passed passing horse after horse down the stretch. Mine That Bird won leading by 6 3/4 lengths, and became the second biggest longshot in Derby history, only Donerail in 1913 won at longer odds.