Saturday, November 17, 2012

Journey West

During the summer of 2012 I was so busy going to hear live music that I didn't have time to update this blog. I had declared this summer to be the "summer of the Allman Brothers", I read Greg Allman's autobiography, My Cross to Bear, I've been listening a lot to his "Low Country Blues" album from 2011, and we saw them in concert 3 times over the summer. We saw great shows by Furthur, Jackie Greene, Todd Snider, and John Hiatt. We saw Bruce Springsteen for the first time. And we made our regular round of Festivals (DelFest, All Good, Floydfest, Misty Mountain, and the Festy). And this year we added to the rotation the Peach Festival in Scranton PA, a great new event hosted by, of course, the Allman Brothers.

But now the leaves have fallen, the temperature is doing the same, so it's time to take the Jayco Pinnacle back out to the Southwest where it's warm and sunny. For the next few weeks I will try to document our travels, recording them for posterity in the digital web. The fantastic music of the summer will probably remain unblogged and only foggy memories.

Saturday we pulled away from home and drove south through Virginia to Greensboro, NC. Our friend Wayne was nice enough to host us for the evening, dinner and local brews at Harper's followed by a nice evening of Grateful Dead concert recordings played on Wayne's spectacular sound system. I was able to slip some live Allmans on the system at the end of the evening. We parked the Pinnacle on the street a few doors down from Wayne's house, an older neighborhood with large trees and narrow streets. As we were loading up to leave Sunday morning one of Greensboro's finest pulled up and said he had a report of a "suspicious vehicle" in the neighborhood. I gave him a tour of the Pinnacle and admitted that I put that envelope under that garbage and we had a fine time and he bid us farewell.

Sunday we went on to Camden, SC where we spent the night with my uncle and aunt, two of the nicest people you'll ever meet. He's got plenty of space around his home so we just pulled in the side yard. They served us some great food, we watched some football and we caught each other up on all of the family news.

Monday we headed down to Savannah, GA and found a nice spot in the Skidaway Island State Park. After setting up the Pinnacle, we headed into the historic district of Savannah. We checked out the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, a beautiful French Gothic church that was built in 1873. Then we headed down to the river walk and had some tasty oysters and crawfish washed down with the local Bernie's English Ale. The next morning I rode the bike around some nice trails in the state park and then we headed south to Florida.




The Pinnacle at Skidaway State Park in Savannah, GA.


Skidaway State Park

We found a nice RV park on the beach in St. Augustine and paid the extra $10 for a beachfront spot. After doing some beach combing for shells, we toured around the colonial Spanish quarter in St. Augustine. We listened to a singer/songwriter accompanied by a fiddle player (didn't get their names) in a neat bar called the Milltop Tavern. It's an old outside bar on the second floor of a building that's half building half tree. We felt like we were in a treehouse. Then we headed over to the marina area for a seafood dinner. Again there was live music, this time from a fellow playing guitar along with accompaniment from pre-recorded bass and drum parts. He played familiar classic rock tunes, but it was fun.

Wednesday morning was cloudy and windy but we walked the beach anyway and then headed into town and toured the Dow Historic Houses, a group of houses from the 18th and 19th centuries, where we learned about the early residents of St. Augustine.

Thursday we hit the road again and made it to Panama City Beach, where we got a great spot for the RV in St. Andrews State Park. Our front door was no further than 20 feet from the water.




St. Andrews State Park, Panama City Beach, FL




Crowded beach scene in Panama City Beach

The weather was still cloudy and cool, so we stayed in Thursday night. The Bird cooked a nice red snapper that she bought at the local fish market and we watched Crossfire Hurricane, the new Rolling Stones documentary on HBO. I thought this was a very well done film, with lots of material that was previously unreleased.



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