We're home from a fun trip down to Florida to see Spring Training baseball. It was too far to go to Arizona to see my beloved Cubbies, so we settled for a few random games in the Grapefruit League. Sarasota, Bradenton, and Tampa -- then up to Tarpon Springs to see friends there.
In Sarasota, we went to a night game -- Orioles vs Tampa Bay at Ed Smith Stadium. Tampa Bay outplayed Baltimore but I could see why they all need a few weeks of practice before the season starts. Lots of missed opportunities on both sides.
Sunday was an afternoon game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Houston Astros in Bradenton at McKechnie Field.
McKechnie Field was pretty small, but it had a great atmosphere. Maybe because it was Sunday afternoon there were lots of families there. The concessions were outside and there was a lawn area where people were chilling out in chaise lounges and playing with the kids who were too little or just tired of the game.
This guy sat in front of us and kept score. His dad said he had is own set of metrics. According to our pastor who is a huge Cardinals fan and preaches a baseball sermon every summer, this is what it's all about -- kids growing up with the game.
Here's a Pirate at bat.
Day Three -- We fought the traffic into Tampa to see the Yankees play the Astros at George Steinbrenner Field. Compared to the other stadiums we went to, this one was super delux!
It was the prettiest field, but most boring game we saw. The score ended up Astros -1, Yankees - 0. It seemed all the hits were pop flys or outs on first.
It was a fun time. This was our Christmas present to each other. I like it a lot more than a sweater.
A Christmas present for Duncan was three day-trips, one in January, one in February and one in March to get us through the winter. Last Saturday, we went on the first: sight-seeing in Columbia (that would be Columbia, South Carolina.)
We visited Riverbanks Zoo, the Botanical Garden and checked out the statehouse grounds.
One of my goals for the day was to see a giraffe. They are weirdly elegant creatures.
We were very impressed with the zoo. They had a lot of most of the animals (15 kangaroos, 6 elephants, 8 - 10 giraffes), nice habitats and good views. It was cold enough for hats and gloves, but sunny -- a great day for the zoo!
Rather than bore you with individual pictures of different animals, I just made a collage. (To see better, press the "control" and "+" key as many times as you want to. When you want to return everything to its original size, press "control" and "0"
The Botanical Garden was an easy walk across the Saluda River from the zoo.
Not sure what this plant is but it was definitely planted to be interesting in the bareness of winter.
We saw lots of these glass ornaments throughout the grounds. They give some color and interest to a garden space in January.
Here is Columbia's Capitol Building. The center palmetto tree is a metal sculpture.
Here is the controversial site of the Confederate Battle Flag on the statehouse grounds. It is on one of the sides of the building, the Memorial is nearly to the sidewalk, and the flag is behind it -- in this picture, hanging quite limply. I can't believe they even have a discussion about it. The flag should go.
I'm sure it was installed to appease the critics of the flag, but there is this really nice African-American History monument on another side of the statehouse grounds. It is in two arced panels depicting the history of African-Americans in the state. This side shows slavery to freedom beginning with slave ships, showing the Civil War, finishing with Harriett Tubman at the far right.
From the other panel, this detail memorializes Briggs v. Elliott, the first of five cases that combined into Brown v. The Board of Education. Briggs v. Elliott challenged segregation in Clarendon County in 1952.
If I had visions of dining at a toney little Capital City hot spot, I had to remember who I was with and who's Christmas present this was. We had dinner at Sandy's Hotdogs -- a joint Duncan remembered from his days as a Park Ranger at Congaree. It reminded me of the Yum Yum in Greensboro. The entire menu was hotdogs and ice cream. And I have to admit, for a hotdog, it was really good.
Our very relaxing mountain-top vacation was well-timed. In the last week of July, we spent five nights sleeping under blankets with the windows open. Now, home again, it is sweaty, sizzling, sweltering, stifling hot! What are we going to do to get through August?
We had a condo at the lovely Chetola Resort at Blowing Rock. None of us had been in that part of the mountains in more than 10 years! Everything in Watagua County looks pretty upscale and prosperous compared to what we all remember. Especially in Blowing Rock, flowers were nearly as lush and pretty as they were in Victoria and Vancouver last year.
Driving 421 and 321 out of Winston-Salem, we took the Parkway into Blowing Rock and the Blue Ridge was living up to its name.
In the 80s, Duncan worked at Blue Ridge Parkway National Park and spent quite a bit of his time around the Moses Cone Memorial Park. As a park ranger, Duncan used to take visitors on a hike from the house up to the grave site of Moses & Bertha Cone and tell them ghost stories. He very much wanted us to walk up there with him, but we never made it. We spent too much time in the wonderful Crafts Showroom that fills the lower floor of Flattop Manor now.
From our deck at Chetola we could see this vast house way in the distance filling the entire mountainside. At first we were unaware it was the Cone House and we grumbled about the poor taste of whoever ruined the view with such a monstrosity. But when looking at a picture in a brochure, we realized that this mostrosity had not been built by "new money" but was Flattop Manor and had been on the mountaintop for quite awhile
We went shopping in Blowing rock, everyone bought shoes at the Tanger Outlet, and we went over to Boone and took a look at the campus of Appalachian before stopping at the Daniel Boone Inn for a blow-out meal. We had great kitchen facilities in our condo and mostly fixed our own meals and ate outside on the patio. That felt like such a luxury!
I had never been to Grandfather Mountain so we did another drive down the Parkway to see that. Very pretty and now I can say I have walked across the swinging bridge.
Truly my daddy's child, I don't think I would make it on the bridge on a windy day, but this was pretty tame -- and wonderfully cool at that elevation. We climbed around on some of the rocks, took in the views, and just enjoyed being there on a nearly perfect day.
This was one of those great relaxing vacations where we did things at our own pace and sometimes it wasn't much.
We went for walks.
We watched the ducks on the pond. The swans at Chetola were raising babies -- (learned that baby swans are called cygnets. I am sure I will continue to call them baby swans.)
Relaxing for everyone except Duncan maybe. He did a lot of driving.
In the evenings, we laughed through episode after episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Sitting on the couch with your mother and laughing at a Priest tell almost dirty jokes is satisfying on so many different levels!
