Travel Week (Part 3)

After a wonderful day spent with the new Cousins, they had to leave us after the Fountain of Youth for a previous engagement. But how fantastic that they freed up a whole day to spend meeting us, spending time with us, and taking us around the town on such short notice (we didn't even know each other existed the week before!).

The day had cleared off and warmed up, so we stopped in to a (stupid) Dairy Queen for some Ice Cream treats. They made the orders wrong, then got irritated when I wanted it corrected.
Oh well, Dairy Queen is still, hands down, The Best chocolate milkshake I've ever had. (J says it's Steak 'N Shake, but I'm not sure. Maybe I need to do a comparison test.)

After that, we went to the St. Augustine Lighthouse and jogged up 219 steps (jogged, yeah, right, haha!).

Going up! (14 stories)

The Castillo, 1.5 mile away

Another storm blew up and it started raining, and we were pooped after that climb anyway, so we went back to the hotel room and just crashed for the rest of the night.

The next morning we got up and headed back home, the weather still as bad as it was on the way down and pretty much the whole time we were down there - rainy, nasty.  We were nearly involved in a multi-car pile up when traffic went from like 70 to 10 mph without any warning. Us and some other cars had to veer off into the emergency lane to keep from rear-ending those in front of us. It was awful.

Shortly after that we stopped at a Rest Stop to use the bathroom and saw this ugliness passing by.

I went in to pee and when I came out just a couple minutes later it was pouring buckets. And the bad news was, it was traveling in the same direction we were. So we had to ride into it, until we got ahead of it again.

We never had really decided if we were going on to Chattanooga or not so I didn't book a hotel room, figuring I could do it online if we decided to go straight on up there. But we heard the weather up here was pretty bad, and didn't want to stay on I-75 anywhere near Atlanta, so we decided to come home, and cut off just north of Macon and came home a longer, harder, but less traffic-icky, and therefore less dangerous I think, route.

Ryan's doctor appointment was at 8:30 this morning, so we got up a little after 5am and was on the road by 6:00. It rained on us all.the.way. up there.

After his appointment, I had a couple of things planned we could do... Thing is, we live so close to Chattanooga (less than 2 hours on a clear, easy driving day), we've been there several times and have pretty much already done everything we're interested in doing there. They have this new "Ducks" thing, where you ride in a WW2 amphibious truck that takes you on a tour around town, and then drive off into the River for a water tour. Sounds pretty neat. There's also a free Electric trolley shuttle thing we've never ridden, and a Pedestrian bridge we haven't walked across. So I figured that was a good way to spend a day, then we'd come on back home this evening. I didn't see wasting the money on a hotel room just to get up and come home tomorrow because there wasn't anything else we wanted to do that would require another day stay.

But it rained and poured the whole time we were in the Dr's office, and everyone kept saying it was supposed to keep raining all day, so we said to heck with it, we'll come back on a warm sunny day.

What this day called for was some Hot Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (and coffee for J).

Hot now! Hot now!

There was a dozen in that box about 5 minutes before.

I think he woofed that one down in two bites!

We enjoyed watching the doughnuts cook and
then get their glaze shower.

There's several Thrift type shops between Chattanooga and here and even though the weather was nasty and we were pretty tired, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to check a couple of them out.

At the first one, I finally found a flannel bedsheet. Who'd have thought it'd be so hard to find a flannel sheet? I've looked before, but the only thing I ever found was a set, at Goodwill, for like $6.00, and I found I couldn't bring myself to break up a perfectly good set.  This was one single flat sheet, and only cost $1.39, but then they were having a sale, so I got like 35¢ off of it, too.

Found two of the mixer beaters for 20¢ each, I'm trying to collect several for a project when I get enough.

I dug around under a stack of pans and things (which is unusual for me, I'm not usually a digger) and found the green Pyrex 9" pie plate for $1.99.  I don't really know how to price Pyrex, but from what I see online, it's Vintage, Lime Green, #209 Pyrex. These were originally introduced about 1952, then the pink and yellow colors about 1954, but I don't know if the pink and yellow colors were additions, and they continued making the lime greens, or of they were a replacement, and my lime green is from 1952-53.

I got three more mixer beaters for 25¢ each (my top price I'm willing to pay), and J found himself a food processor he's been wanting. Funny thing is, it's exactly identical to the one we have that Mom gave us a few years back that used to be my Grannie's.
J's been using it to make his Super-Secret trout fish bait, which involves stinky sardines, and it makes the processor stink. He has to really de-fumigate it with bleach so when we use it for cole slaw and such it doesn't make it taste fishy. So he's been wanting another one to use for just making his bait, then he can just wash it but not worry about if it still smells like fishy.

And now we're back home.