Advertisement
Published: July 13th 2006
Sailing on our Anniversary
On a Biloxi Bay schooner on our fourth wedding anniversary!
Biloxi, Miss. - Hendersonville, N.C.
9,246 miles to date
1,490 miles this leg Apologies for technical difficulties that delayed the posting of this entry... On May 18, Jeff and I celebrated our four-year wedding anniversary with a significant outing: we went sailing for the first time since leaving Port Townsend. Jeff later argued that it wasn’t really sailing because we didn’t actually set sail. I wonder that after four years of marriage, he doesn’t know better than not to argue with me!
Our three-hour cruise on Biloxi Bay was made aboard the
Glenn L. Swetmann, one of two replica wooden oystering schooners owned by the
Biloxi Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum. The waterfront museum was sadly leveled by Hurricane Katrina, but the two vessels safely rode out the storm tucked into a bayou a couple miles upstream on the Tchoutacabouffa River. We joined a public sail with a family celebrating the 85th birthday of a World War II submariner, and Jeff made his day by asking to hear his war story. It made Jeff’s day to listen entranced for the next hour! I appreciated the wind in my hair and the waterside perspective of the shoreline
Capt. Brandon
Capt. Brandon (standing) and his crew piloted the schoner for our anniversary sail/motor. Note the barrier island in the distance. hurricane damage and rebuilding. As a fellow passenger noted, “It was a relief to be able to stand back and look at it from a distance rather than being surrounded by it. It feels better.”
Earlier that day I’d visited a Biloxi boatyard to do a WoodenBoat magazine report and interviewed the legendary Bill Holland. (One of the Maritime Museum’s two schooners was hauled out in the yard for repairs, and that’s how we got connected to her sister ship.) Bill, now 60, has run an old-school wooden boatbuilding and repair yard on Biloxi Bay for 26 years and suffered seemingly insurmountable losses during Katrina, including the disappearance of 40,000 board feet of specialty lumber and his entire home, which was built right next to the ways. Yet sheer determination has brought his business back to life, as much not to disappoint his loyal customers as anything. Meeting Bill was inspirational, and a profile that I hope does justice to his courage should appear in the Sept./Oct. issue.
I must say it was a relief to continue down the coast to Mobile, Ala., and find ourselves leaving the worst of the hurricane disaster zone behind. We stayed with
Biloxi Cat
This catamaran went screaming by our schooner on Biloxi Bay; note the collapsed over-water roadway behind it that has not been rebuilt since the hurricane. another Global Freeloader host, a 25-year-old chemical engineer named Barb who worked for DuPont and had recently moved to Mobile for experience in a new corporate division. Although she was not a local, she provided us with the maps to explore the downtown and the
Battleship Alabama museum. We got creative in her well-stocked kitchen and served up several memorable meals that we all enjoyed on her screened-in porch.
Then it was on to Montgomery, Ala., and a memorable reunion with my third-grade teacher. From the elementary school I attended in Bolivia, which makes it more remarkable. We hadn’t seen each other since I was eight years old and in her class at the Santa Cruz Christian Learning Center, where I went to school for two years while my father taught at the veterinary school in this third-world country. Miss Snyder (I can’t think of her any other way) actually lives in Florida, but we managed to meet up in Alabama at a church construction project her husband Marlyn is managing as part of the Assembly of God’s
MAPS RV Volunteers mission program. We spent a night in Matilda parked next to their RV and really enjoyed catching up with her
Biloxi Tug
Tugboat on the hurricane-wracked Biloxi, Miss., waterfront. and meeting Marlyn and their 4-year-old granddaughter Ramona. Miss Snyder told me I’m the first student from her year of teaching in Bolivia that she’s seen since then. I made a point of thanking her for being an influential person in my life - as most teachers have the privilege of being.
Jeff just had to visit
Andersonville, the Confederate prisoner-of-war stockade in Georgia where one of his Union ancestors died of the deplorable conditions (lack of food, water and shelter) a few months shy of the war’s end. It was a little depressing, to say the least, but the site is nicely paired with the National Prisoner of War Museum. The
National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Ga., was also well worth visiting.
I knew we wouldn’t make it through this trip without losing something, but I was terribly chagrined to realize 200 miles down the road that I’d left my toiletries kit in the restroom at the city RV park in Andersonville. We’re talking prescription medications, toothbrush and hair clips, to name some of the essentials I had to replace until we arrived a week later at the address to which the saintly park manager had mailed my kit.
Ann & Bill on AT
48 hours later, we returned Ann & Bill to the same Appalachian Trail trailhead. They plan to hike two more months, completing the southern half of the trail by early August. Next summer: the northern half! OK, so it wasn’t really lost, but this was a close call!
A serendipitous connection led us to Monroe, Ga., not far east of Atlanta, where we stayed three nights with a 30-something developer who had cold-called Jeff two years ago in the Port Townsend planning department asking for information on our town’s cottage housing ordinance. Chad wound up flying out to Port Townsend to view our cottage developments and others in the area (they are distinguished by 600-1200 s.f. dwellings with greater density than ordinary developments, typically with condominium-form of ownership) and had kept in touch, so when he heard we were taking this trip, he invited us to check out his home town. Good news, the city council had passed a cottage housing ordinance based somewhat on Port Townsend’s example, and Chad has a site plan for the town’s first cottages. It was exciting to visit that property and the historic buildings downtown that Chad’s family has bought and renovated. Thanks in part to their efforts, Monroe had enough original charm and current energy that we did not dismiss outright Chad’s attempts to recruit Jeff to the planning department and me to the local newspaper! I would
Ann & Bill in Matilda
On Memorial Day weekend, we picked up Shelly's parents, Ann & Bill, from the Appalachian Trail, where they'd been hiking for one month, and transported them to Rogersville, Tenn., for a family reunion. love to live for a spell in one of those late 19th-century Southern homes…
Chad and his girlfriend Donna planned many activities for us during our short stay, but our favorite was a cook-out hosted by friends who also manufactures biodiesel. It was fascinating to visit Rick and Crista’s ranch and tour their homemade fuel operation. Diesel made from chicken fat (purchased from a chicken processing plant) powers their tractor and farm truck and Rick dreams of someday supplying the biodiesel needs of his county. That’s how biodiesel seems to work best—by keeping it local and small-scale. For those of you in the know who are wondering about his manufacturing equipment, Rick lucked out by acquiring surplus stainless steel tanks with gauges, valves, heat jackets and agitators from a chemical company that was going out of business. Just finding the equipment with which to make biodiesel is a major hurdle for wannabe manufacturers. Despite this and other regulatory hurdles which our government is lobbied hard by established energy corporate interests
not to remedy, the biodiesel revolution in this country is coming and cannot come too soon.
While in the Atlanta area, I reuned with Erin, a childhood friend
Jeff & Laura w banjos
We attended a Wednesday night music jam in the Asheville area with Laura Boosinger, whom Jeff met at a banjo camp in Washington last fall. who had married a man who was born in the same small town that I was, and in which she attended college: Jefferson City, Tenn. Meeting Darrell and their nine-month-old baby Joshua was a treat. We may see them again on another swing-through to visit Atlanta proper.
On May 26 we had a date to meet up with my parents, Ann and Bill, who started hiking the
Appalachian Trail in late April and had hiked nearly 400 miles in 28 days by the time we picked them up at Spivey Gap on the North Carolina-Tennessee border. The 2,174-mile trail starts in northern Georgia and they are planning to hike half of it this summer and the other half next summer, which makes them "section hikers" as opposed to "thru hikers," who do it all in one season. This adventure is just one more they’ve been planning in the years leading up to my dad’s semi-retirement last year.
It was really fun to have our paths cross in this manner, and when we whisked them to my dad’s hometown of Rogersville, Tenn., for a whirlwind weekend that included the baptism of their niece’s (my cousin’s) baby Jack (whom they had
Singing w Freddie & Georgie
When in Rogersville, we always stop in to play a little music with Shelly's dad's talented cousin Freddie (left, on accordion). Our under-the-trees jam was also attended by his mother Georgie, Shelly's dad Bill, and Jeff on guitar. not yet met), it was nice for us not to be the center of attention for once. I think my parents’ stories of the trail out-trumped ours of the open road! Forty-eight hours later, we returned Ann and Bill to their trailhead for another two months of hiking. We promised all the relatives in Rogersville that we would return later in June for a more leisurely visit.
But for now we are camped out in Hendersonville, N.C., near Asheville, at the lovely home of my second cousin’s family. Stephanie and her husband Ken and daughter Leah built a house three years ago that feels very much like the house we built for ourselves in Port Townsend, so we of course feel right at home.
We plan to make Hendersonville our “home base” for the month of June and return here between trips to the surrounding states. First of all, it’s cooler up here in the mountains. We escaped weeks of straight 90-degree-plus temperatures by climbing into the Smokies (Hendersonville sits at 2,200feet above sea level). Secondly, now that we’re in the heart of bluegrass and old-time fiddle music, there is so much for us to hear, see and
Aunt Cheryl & Grandson Jack
Shelly's aunt Cheryl with her grandson Jack, in Rogersville, Tenn. do!
So far we’ve attended two wonderful, small-scale music festivals: one at the
Carl Sandburg Home Historical Site on Memorial Day and one on Saturday called Mountain Echoes in Clyde, N.C. The first festival was free and we scored comp tickets to the second through the Asheville-based banjo instructor whom Jeff met at
American Banjo Camp at Fort Flagler last September. Laura Boosinger was also kind enough to invite us to her home and to take us to a private music jam earlier this week, where we were introduced to Appalachian “swing.” (We love Laura’s latest CD,
"Let Me Linger"!)
In addition to being an amazing clawhammer banjo player, Laura is also known as the “Songbird of the Smokies,” with a honey-sweet voice unlike any we’ve heard before. She played at Mountain Echoes in the band
David Holt and the Lightning Bolts, and in their final set of the evening—after a song about how to make love last—she introduced us from the stage as a nice young couple from Port Townsend, Wash., who were traveling around the country, and that she hoped to get a postcard at the conclusion of the trip letting her know we were still married! We stood up and waved, and afterwards, a white-haired man came up
Dressing Jack
Parents Jamie & Louis carefully stuff Jack into a traditional baptism gown. to us and pressed a $20 bill in our hand, saying, “My wife wants you to have this for gas money.” Another “angel”! Not being able nor wanting to refuse a heartfelt present like that, we traded him for a Waltzing Matilda calling card and told him his wife could read about our travels on the printed website. So if she’s reading this, thank you!
I’ll wrap up this entry with a warning I learned the hard way: Don’t promise a class of second-graders that “
everyone will get an animal balloon, just be patient and wait your turn” unless you’ve done the math in advance. I was tying animal balloons at Leah’s class picnic and trying to control the ensuing crush with these reassuring words when I
ran out of balloons three kids from the end of the line. I hope they can forgive me someday.
P.S. Olympic Peninsula readers, take note: I just submitted an essay and photos on our Bay St. Louis sister city experience to the
Peninsula Daily News, for publication sometime in the June 10-15 window. Look for the spread on page C1.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0308s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Professor Numskull
non-member comment
Sheer Envy!
I recognize most of the places you’ve been, but, sadly none of the folks you’re visiting. I so look forward to the next batch of pictures even though they don’t mean anything to me, because you make me want to see my family. I’m thinking of taking a road trip myself. Happy Trails, Professor Numskull