Hiking, Edisto Beach, Southern BBQ

Hi - Dianne here. On Thursday, Roger and I took the dogs for a hike in Edisto Island State Park. It's sure different from Turkey Run! Palm trees, pine trees, and marsh grasses. It's very pretty in its own way. (Still looking forward to Turkey Run next summer). The only wildlife we saw were some gray squirrels, which got the boys' attention, and some marsh birds that I added to my birding life list.

All our hiking on beach and trails worked up an early appetite, so we traveled to check out the BBQ place Roger mentioned the other day. Wow, what a spread! I'll let him elaborate on it below.

We have been really lucky here, weather-wise. The local newscasters keep saying it's about ten degrees above the normal temp of 61. It's actually been in the mid- to upper 70s each day. It was so nice Friday, that after our morning beach exercise-walk, we packed up our beach chairs and walked back over to spend about three relaxing hours watching the waves crash on the beach, reading (Roger), and reading and Sudoku (me). The dogs even enjoyed laying on the grass mats at our feet and made no attempt to leave. We need to enjoy it now, because it's supposed to become more seasonal next week, with a

high in the 50s.

We've heard that sand fleas can be a problem here, but evidently not in December, because we've not been bothered by insects at all, even mosquitos. I can believe they'd be a big problem part of the year. This afternoon Roger plans to watch the Purdue basketball game on CBS, and while he's doing that, I think I'll take a beach chair, my bird book, and binoculars to the beach and try to add some more birds to my list.

Tomorrow we pack up and head for Skidaway Island, outside Savannah, GA for two weeks. We'll have to find a replacement for our beach walks. I was mortified to learn that in the motorhome I only manage to get a couple hundred steps a day, as opposed to about 5,000 just walking around in my three-story house in Pendleton! There will have to be some major compensating for that.

Roger here... The Barbeque place was great. (Gary Z. - worthy of driving through five states for dinner.) We had been reading about it and saw that it had been rated as one of the top ten barbeque places in the country. Because it was in a little room attached to a gas station, miles from nowhere, it was even more fun. It was definitely a mom and pop place. For $9.25 you got a barbeque buffet that not only had delicious pork barbeque, but also 29 other "southern" foods. At the table there were five different barbeque sauce choices. My favorite was the Carolina Red. All the other customers were local. Quite an experience.