"The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one."
~ Wendell Willkie
Finally able to sit down and peck out a post. Three weekdays of silence; no wonder no one reads this sporadic drivel.
Why fewer posts? Peg's only working two or three days a week, and may not even do that much longer. When she's home and on the next pillow and then asking if I'd like a little breakfast and a second cup of coffee, well, I just find the mornings get away from me.
But today I drove her over to the surgery center at 5:45, because Dio brought her roadster down from Corning last night and it has a slow leak in one of its very expensive new tires. Now we have to figure out who's going to sacrifice a day at Goodyear addressing the problem. It's always something.
With the two of us pretty much full time in Florida for the winter and early spring, the Columbia's been sitting more than usual. The last couple weekends, then, we've found excuses for relatively short jaunts around the southeast, taking advantage of the early warming and clear skies.
Two weekends ago we were sitting at the farm on a Saturday, having that second cup of coffee and trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. The boat cruise at Wakulla was full, as usual, and Taylor County is sufficiently remote that all of the places we like to frequent, like Crystal River or Cedar Key, entail spending the better part of the day in the truck.
At some point P suggested we find a flying destination for what general aviation folks call the "$100 Hamburger", a trip for lunch somewhere just to have an excuse to fly. Where hadn't we been? Studying the VFR low chart, I noted that St. Simons Island appeared close, maybe 45 minutes in the air, and had a nice airport. Why not?
After reserving a rental car there, we rode over to the Columbia and took off into cobalt blue skies bound for the Atlantic coast. Crossing into Georgia we soon found ourselves over the Okefenokee Swamp, a vast expanse of marsh without a single cut for a road or a power line.
It occurred to me that if the propeller quit spinning and we had to ditch down there, they'd never find the plane or the bodies.
The pattern at St. Simons was busy, but the FBO efficiently parked us and pulled the rental car right up to the spinner so we could jump in and start our adventure. Yes, flying yourself is a hundred times better than any airline experience.
Needing a goal for our trip, we decided to drive over to the Cloisters, a hoity-toity beachfront community with a golf course I'd considered playing as part of an instructional package they offer there.
But funny thing about the Cloisters--you and I can't drive onto the property. It's only for owners and renters. The jacked young gate guard was polite enough, but made it clear we weren't the kind of folks who were welcome there. My class warrior hackles raised, we drove back across the marsh into St. Simons.
Failing in our goal of checking out the golf course, we stumbled upon Fort Frederica, on the inland side of the island.
What an amazing find. Now a national park, Fort Frederica was the southernmost British outpost established by Oglethorpe in the 1730s as a buffer against Spanish incursions. At one point a thousand folks lived here, all selected for their skills in one trade or another. Now all that's left are the foundations of their homes, all oddly filled with oyster shells, and the old tabby magazine on the bank of the river. With developers apparently building on every flat surface of the island, and gullible rich people buying these places despite the threats posed by climate change, this still space filled with oak trees and spanish moss is a treasure.
Deciding St. Simons wasn't for us, we made our way to the mainland and then out to Jekyll Island. Brunswick was pretty awful--a sprawl of box stores and billboards that could be any town in the coastal South. Crossing onto Jekyll, however, was like entering another world.
The old Jekyll Island Club still stands in a neighborhood of turn of the last century homes and community buildings, once an enclave where the richest families in America wintered. It still retains much of that now weathered elegance, although the crowd eating french fries out on the veranda is a little more plebian.
We wandered inside the hotel a bit, and found Peg a ranch water.
That, friends, is the face of a woman who's discovered the bartender put ginger beer in her drink. This was, without question, the worst bartender we've ever encountered, slow and high on who knows what. Still, the place was lovely, and we decided we'd come back one day when we have a little more time.
With that, we wandered back to the plane, were confounded by the self-service snack bar in the FBO (the attendant had to navigate the process for us, thereby eliminating whatever efficiency they sought to achieve), then took off in howling winds and turbulence for the flight back across the Okefenokee to our little swamp by the sea at Wyldswood.
It was a great adventure, but reminded us we have it pretty good right where we are.
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