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Published: March 15th 2024
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Dear friends and family,
For this blog, I’m going to try something new. I’m trying to dictate the news on my phone. Why? Because when we are in Ecuador – our next big adventure – I don’t want to have to take 2 laptops (one for me to write the blog and the other for David to be culling his photos) – or to wait forever and fall asleep.
We made it to Banner Elk North Carolina with no difficulty, and had plenty of time to share a nice dinner at the red Onion with Cinda Williamson, just like we did three Christmases ago.
In fact, we had enough time to stop at a birding area on the amazing but hilly campus of Appalachian State University, which is right in the center of Boone, North Carolina. Not many birds there, but two delightful pileated woodpeckers.
The next day we went to Grandfather mountain, which was very interesting. It’s named that because it looks like an old man reclining. It is the only privately owned UNESCO biosphere site because it has such biodiversity that some flora is endemic to this mountain. You pay an entrance fee, and they
had very nice habitats for some of their rescued animals, like bald eagles, otters, black bears, and even a cougar. Unfortunately, they were such nice habitats that we saw very few animals (lots of space to hide). It was a perfect blue sky day and you could see for miles from the top. (In fact, near the summit we walked across the “mile high bridge” but passed on the summit hike, which would have involved ladders and ropes. Dinner was a charming evening at Cinda’s.
(For those of you who like the
Oulander series, Grandfather Mountain is supposed to be where they settled when Jamie and Claire came to the US in the 1700s.)
On Thursday morning we headed south along the very windy roads down the mountains, then west from Atlanta to sleep in Bremen Georgia for 2 nights. David looked up the best place to eat in Bremen, and came up with the Hitchin’ Post 55, which did indeed have amazing hamburgers, but unfortunately, it’s perfectly legal to smoke like chimneys inside bars. Before dinner, we had managed to squeeze in a visit to a local birding site, but no luck.
On Friday morning, we
headed back to Atlanta, and spent about six hours in the amazing Georgia aquarium. Two Whale sharks, 24’ and 27’ (not like the 40 footers), hammerheads, and many other types of sharks in the predator zone, a huge tropical fish aquarium, where we recognized many old friends, the most enormous of green morays! and many other lovely sections. You may remember that these things were on the list to do last March, before David surprised us all by needing a pacemaker.
In the middle of all these days, we also managed to take care of my IRA rollover with all the paperwork and details, faxes, telephone consultations etc. In fact, today I was juggling a text, an email, and the phone. I am techno Nana!
General comments: we watched as the first budding trees appeared along the way, but the mountains of NC were still very bare. Lots of daffodils everywhere though, which is exciting. Comment about Atlanta – haven’t heard this much horn-blowing for a while, and traffic!!! Also, when it comes to the folks in the bar, or behind the hotel desk – well, we need a translator machine!
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