To bring this up to date as of the last post, I spent Thanksgiving behind the motorhome. About 50 yards to my rear, the campground pavilion was the setting for the owners’ festive holiday dinner. Each patron was asked to bring a covered dish, I made succotash. The owners deep fried twenty five turkeys for a turnout of about a hundred people. They were done in five different flavors from raspberry to Italian herb. Someone must have made sure all bases were covered as there were plenty of desserts to accompany the plethora of food choices. I had the best pecan pie these buds have ever sampled. 
Drinks, food, turkey, and desserts were all free, all you had to do was bring your addition. They even provided a three piece band for melodic company to enhance the mood. I’ve always got a kick out of striking up conversations with strangers I meet in bookstores, airports, and campgrounds. I seem to have a particular talent for drawing personal stories from these people and I love hearing from them. But far more valuable than the entertainment of the stories is the connection made with another human being. It is a comfort like no other. It is the comfort of personal communion. So I invited myself to sit with a couple from western Kentucky, she a former middle school teacher and a retired tool and die man. They had been full-timing for the last six years and we traded stories, ideas, and tips that we may not have heard before. I hung around for about and hour and then the country western music got the best of me, so I bid my adieus and trudged back to the rig and spent the rest of the day reading and watching football. The pecan pie sent my enzymes over the top and I didn’t yearn for food the rest of the day. At week’s end, I found myself braving the commercial haunts and picked up a few stocking stuffers to take north next month, and then I spent a few hours at Barnes and Noble, drinking coffee and perusing books, one of my most favorite pastimes. The chill was getting the best of my bike riding but I did find time to stop at an indoor shooting range and practice my marksmanship. Apparently, I’ve been away from practicing far too long.
I picked up a rental car, on Saturday, packed up my belongings, and moved the motorhome to a storage site on Sunday. Then I headed south for Hilton Head Island. I plan on spending the week there but found myself leaving too early. When I reached Beaufort I found that I was going to be a few hours early so I detoured 20 miles out of the way to Hunting Island State Park. I heard there was a neat lighthouse there and I thought this may make a good photo op. The state park was different. A massive grove of palm trees so thick that one couldn’t walk though them, not more than ten or fifteen feet. They have carved just enough of a path through this grove just enough to pave an asphalt thruway. It was very nice but you couldn’t see much of anything on either side of the road but palms. At first I thought how enticing, how southern, how unusual but after a mile or so of this, enough was enough already. At last, the lighthouse. I planned on climbing the staircase to the top to garner in the entire area from a bird’s eye view. I even had my wide angle attached to take in as much scenery in one shot as possible. Not to be had. Work was being done on the lighthouse and the stairs were off limits for another two weeks. 
Nevertheless, it was a better way to waste two hours than traveling on some busy thoroughfare. I arrived just about dusk in Hilton Head and pulled into the Surfwatch villas. I’m holed up in a three bedroom condo for the next week. Off to the gym.
