One of My Favorite People
Day 134 – August 12, 2003 – Tuesday
I had a great time visiting Karen Jones in Charleston. She gave me a wonderful tour, and it was a pleasure to meet her boyfriend, Travis. Karen is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, and while I was only with Travis at lunch, he seemed like a really special person, too. Looked to me like a match made in heaven!
We had a great hamburger at Your Place, a true “hole-in-the-wall” local restaurant. Home cookin’ at it’s finest. The BEST burgers for a fraction of what you would pay at fancy places. Two nice ladies served us.
Apologies to Charleston, as the magnet of home grabbed me and kept me from seeing sights the way I normally would have. Bozzie Jane and I will return to Charleston soon, and we will see everything then. So, I said goodbye to Karen and hit the highway. I drove down “the coast” to Savannah to complete the circling of America (as that was the coastal city where the trip began on April 1), and then I drove from Savannah to Atlanta.
I took a picture of the giant chair at Richardson’s Barber and Beauty Supply.
Dublin has very pretty Georgian-style and Victorian-style buildings and homes on Highway 80.
It rained most of the way from Savannah to Atlanta, so I didn’t see much, and I was simply tired and ready to be at home.
Lon was the first person I saw upon returning to Atlanta after 134 days. He was an actor. I met him at the gas station near our home.
I arrived home at 9:22 pm. I thought Boz would be surprised, but she was expecting me.
38,127 on the odometer. We logged 29,062 miles in our cars. I need to calculate the mileage in the rental car in Alaska and the loaner car in North Dakota plus the mileage we’ll do in Hawaii, and that will be the grand total for the trip. We could hit 30,000. We originally thought the trip would be about 20,000 miles, but we really didn’t know. It’s impossible to calculate the mileage on two-lane roads, the time you spend in towns, the mileage you’ll spend lost, the unexpected side trips that you’ll make, backtracking, etc.
The trip began 134 days before on April 1. The trip had been a spectacular experience, but I was happy to get home. We need to make reservations for Hawaii — state #50, and we will go just as soon as we can get a flight that will let us use our frequent flyer points. We hope this will be within the next two weeks.
I planned to spend a lot of time updating the website, processing photos, and writing. I planned to continue to maintain the Daily Journal until the Hawaii trip completed the journey.
And we do plan to take the trip Round America again. Next time, BACKWARDS! We’ll start in Atlanta, drive to Savannah, and then head north rather than south. The fatigue factor kept me from seeing as many sights in the east as I should have, so we’ll correct this the next time by starting there.
The lesson I re-learned today is that as enjoyable as travel can be, there is little that is more enjoyable than good friends and family. And while there are fabulous places to see all across our amazing country, home is a mighty special place.
The Daily Journal of Round America:
Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.
You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.