Beaver Island Ferry Biting through the Waves
This offseason had to be scheduled a bit different since TJ needed some facial skin procedures as a result of cancerous spots. Since we did not know the length of the recovery process we decided to have the procedure done early in November in Petoskey, so that everything could properly heal prior to traveling. Less than a couple of weeks later we started our off season travels.
Our travel down from Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan is pretty much a given, since the youngest daughter and her adorable family lives in the city of Holland/Michigan. Here is where we usually stay a week or longer before the Christmas Holidays, to spend some fun days and have our car maintained. Our Murano is from 2007 and spend her first ten years short tripping the sunny Florida climate. Since 2016 she has primarily done the long journeys east-west and north-south. This year she is going to get a heavy make-over engine wise and new tires. She’s worth it. If you ever need a great travel car, the Nissan Murano definitely qualifies.
As soon as the car has received dealer approval for the trip south, we get on the road direction Nashville/Brentwood Tennessee for a Christmas visit with Kay who, just a year earlier, had lost her longtime husband Rich had also been Han’s oldest friend in the USA. A week of good food, great restaurants, some fancy nail work and visiting other old friends is on the usual menu, as well as a good amount of Mexican Train games.
After about a week of rest it’s time for our next trip stops bringing us back ‘Home” to Amelia Island/Fernandina Beach, about 30 miles north of Jacksonville, Florida. Here we usually stay a week to ten days with old friends Jack and Sharon, who provide absolute hospitality heaven, one block from the beach. We lived in Fernandina Beach for almost 10 years, operated a B&B on the beach there, had a very popular website and still have tons of friends there. So never a quiet moment when we’re on island.
Early January we say goodbye and leave for two weeks in a Hilton Head condo. Now Hilton Head is chosen because it has a nice swimming pool in the open public area, 4 floors up enveloped by condos. Han is in his element and swims daily between 75 and 100 laps. The hot whirlpool is an extra luxury for his knees. In the weekend son Drew and his wife Jessica, both work for supermarket giant Publix and live in Savannah, come for a visit and we all are having a great time thrift shopping, discovering the town and having dinner in several restaurants.
After the two weeks in Hilton Head we’re on the road again and via well established cities in Georgia such as university town Athens and Atlanta suburb of Marietta we drove back to Tennessee’s eastern mountain range and settled in a wonderful old Airbnb in Allard near Jamestown with a great mom-and-pop grocery store called Burnette’s Suprette less than 500 yards away from the AirBnB. We used the week to cook dinner for TJ’s oldest Maranda, who owns a horse farm on the Cumberland Plateau and we rested that week, reading, eating and sleeping.
When the week was over, we were ready for the “exhaustion” of another transatlantic cruise.
We drove back 2-1/2 hours to Brentwood/Nashville where we left our car with dear friend Kay and flew Delta (yep we get points) to Ft.Lauderdale. (Of course via Atlanta…) An airport taxi later and we checked into a nice Airbnb owned by a fellow Caribbean brother, with whom we had a long and animated conversation about politics and cultural differences. The next morning we took off to the cruise ship port in search of the Sky Princess. which was supposedly going to take us from Ft. Lauderdale transatlantic to Madeira/Tenerife/Casablanca/Santiago de Compostela/La Coruna to Southampton in England.
This time we were ready to explore England and TJ’s ancestry with Southampton as our starting point.
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