Heading South . . . but is it warm?

 

We left Rome on Monday morning, Dec. 28, the last week of 2009.  Our first stop was Fayetteville to visit Mary Jessica and her family and her brother T. Harley who stopped by to see us on his way home to Virginia.  It was great to see all of them, and we are really enjoying the delicious goodies they gave us.  Richard makes mighty fine peanut brittle.

Then we headed to Jekyll Island to the 34th Annual New Year’s Bluegrass Festival.  We arrived early enough to park looking out at the Atlantic a short way from the Convention Center.   Jim and Hope arrived later in the day and parked opposite us.  George and Irene had time for a bike ride down to the campground and back through the marsh and then along the beach.  We all went out to eat at Crab Daddy’s on St. Simons Island that evening and enjoyed both the food and pleasant service.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday  were mainly spent attending the Bluegrass Festival.  There were 18 groups performing over the 3 days, 6 each day.  Among our favorites were The Little Roy and Lizzy Show, excellent banjo and violin players respectively, and the Tennessee Gentlemen whose singing was outstanding with their lead singer able to hold high notes a  l-o-n-g  time.

Jekyll was well decorated with Christmas lights and a full moon – a blue moon.  Unfortunately the cold weather brought an end to bicycling Jekyll’s great bike trails which cover the island except that George and Jim braved the cool temps to take a bike ride to the south end of the island.  We can wish for warmer weather for the 2011 festival! 

On Sunday we drove to Ft. Pierce, FL, where on Monday we toured Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Company, home of Natalie’s fresh squeezed juice.  It was a very interesting tour.  The only drawback is that we had to be there at 7:00 a.m. in order to see the bottling process.  George loves his fresh squeezed orange juice and was instrumental in getting the Rome Kroger to carry   Natalie’s juice which is bottled under Kroger’s Private Selection label.  Our tour guide, David Cortez, director of logistics and customer service, very generously sent us away with bottles of orange and grapefruit juice.