Cammie and I
decided to take a little vacation by ourselves while my mother bravely watched
our children. We initially booked a cruise, but backed out a few weeks
prior due to the tantrums our son, Jay Allen, started throwing the very week we
planned our vacation. We knew it would be harder to return from a cruise
than from the beach (I could actually picture myself swimming back to Florida),
so we went coastal – to Coastal Georgia, that is.
We started our
vacation in historic Savannah. Being the thrifty people that we are, we
sought and found a great deal on a hotel (www.priceline.com).
When we got to the hotel, we noticed everybody was staring at us in a strange
way. Maybe the ribbon worn by the manager and hotel employees explained
the staring. It said, “Welcome, Paranoid Schizophrenic Researchers
Convention.” Maybe that explains the great rate the hotel gave us.
Maybe we were not just guests, but were subjects! Maybe they were trying
to make us paranoid by staring so they could study our reaction!
All that
paranoia made us hungry, so we hoofed it over to River Street for dinner.
A double ear-ringed gentleman with a beard and a sports coat stood outside the
River House Restaurant handing out coupons (a good strategy to increase the
Sunday night crowd). For some reason, he neglected to hand us a “buy-one,
get-one-free entrée” coupon, so I asked for one. The modern day pirate
then told Cammie she would have to dance for the coupon. I laughed,
Cammie laughed, but he persisted. I then wheeled around and looked Mr.
Pirate in the eye and said, “She’s not dancing. We are Baptist and it’s
more likely that we will make love on this sidewalk than it is that my wife
will dance for you!” To which he responded, “Here’s your coupon.
Enjoy your dinner.” We do not resent the fact that some people think
Baptists are crazy, we use it to our advantage.
We made our way
inside and had a great seafood dinner with no dancing involved, and thus
concluded our first night on vacation.
I woke up early
the next morning and went for a little run to better acquaint myself with
Savannah. It was an uneventful run, except when a car sped through the
crosswalk and almost ran over another gentleman and me. Note to self –
watch crazy drivers on cell phones when crossing the street in Savannah.
After I
retrieved Cammie, we made our way to breakfast on River Street and then headed
back to the hotel room to check out. In the same crosswalk where I made
the note to self earlier, a crazy van driver on a cell phone ran a red
light. With my head on a swivel, I saw the impending danger and pulled
Cammie back even with me by her arm. It gave her quite a start, but
before she could ask why I pulled her backwards, the crazy van driver blew by
us – less than three feet away. You could say that we were three feet
from spending the rest of our vacation in the emergency room.
Now charged
with all the adrenaline associated with a brush with death, we decided to
stroll through historic Savannah. At 11:30am, we signed up for a walking
tour that started at 1:00pm. I have no explanation why, but we spent the
90 minutes before the walking tour walking. But remember, we were child
free and just escaped two crazy drivers, so there were no limits on our
energy.
During our 90
minute warm up walk, I decided (for the first time in many years) to buy a
cigar in anticipation of UNC’s championship celebration later that night.
I found a Churchill in the Savannah Bulldog brand at the Tinderbox on Bull
Street. The Savannah Bulldog Cigars are named for the two bulldogs that
diligently protect the Tinderbox, Pinky and Max. I almost stepped on
Pinky on my way in, and if I did not know that Pinky is a trained security
professional, I could have sworn that he was asleep. Max was due to
relieve Pinky in a few minutes, so the store security apparatus remained in a
high state of alert throughout the day.
Our Savannah
Walks, Inc. tour (37 Abercorn Street, 888-SAV-WALK, www.savannahwalks.com) started on time
with a crowd of about 30 people, including a Paris Hilton look alike. Our
guide, David D'Arcy, predicted early on that
many people would be surprised that we actually walked so much on our walking
tour. His words proved true as our group began to stretch out over
several dozen yards as we moved from site to site. As the history buffs
among us listened intently to David’s oratory on the most significant and
interesting pieces of Savannah’s history, one member of our group had a hunger
attack and ran to the nearest food stand and bought hot dogs for her and her
son. She walked the rest of the tour with a very colorful mustard and
ketchup stain on her shirt. The parents who brought their young children
on the tour paid little to no attention to David as they tried to run herd on
their rowdy children. Cammie and I smiled at our collective wisdom in
leaving our precious, well-behaved little people with their grandmother (Lord
help her). There were only about six people who managed to keep pace with
David during the whole tour despite his best efforts to keep the group
together. Despite some of the challenges of the group members, it was a
great tour. We enjoyed the great weather and the great history of Savannah.
There is more
history in Savannah than you could take in if you lived there for years, but we
absorbed as much as we could in a day. I highly recommend the walking
tours over the trolley and horse drawn carriage tours, but if you want to eat
hot dogs or resent the walking part of the walking tour, you can tour Savannah
on the seat of your pants.
After a quick
trip to the candy stores, we left Savannah and headed to Jekyll Island.
We stayed at the last resort on Beachview Drive, the Holiday Inn. We did
not know it when we arrived, but one of the locals let us know that Jekyll
Island is the place to go if you are a newlywed or a nearly dead. Giving
our choices, forgive us for claiming to have just gotten married (12 years have
gone by really fast!).
Jekyll Island
is pretty calm and pretty tame and a great place to take your family. It
is small enough that you can tour the whole island on bicycle in one day of
leisurely riding, as long as you keep the gnats out of your eyes. We rented
some bicycles and did just that, except for keeping the gnats out of our
eyes.
Cammie and I
had similar agendas during our first night at the beach. She wanted to
enjoy some interrupted sleep and I wanted to enjoy the NCAA basketball
championship uninterrupted. We both accomplished our goals, but I
had to cheer silently during the game due to Cammie’s condition of
slumber.
I want to take
an aside here to thank my childhood friend, Frankie Porterfield, for making me
a UNC basketball fan back in the days of Dean Smith, Michael Jordon, Sam
Perkins, James Worthy, Jimmy Black, and Matt Doherty. His influence on me
all those years ago made even this year’s vacation better. I enjoyed a
UNC championship and a Savannah Bulldog cigar that first night at the
beach. I hope Frankie enjoyed the game as much as I did.
Cammie and I
discovered Jekyll Island’s major shortfall the next morning. There are few to
no places to get breakfast. We drove into the town of Brunswick and ate
at the Cracker Barrel, where our waitress was country as cornbread. She
said honey and sugar enough to sweeten our whole day, but that would have been
too perfect.
The last time
Cammie and I went on a vacation by ourselves, we returned expecting Jay
Allen. To avoid that situation during this vacation, we decided to have
our semi-annual fight over money right after breakfast. Completely out of
place during our fight, I looked out the car window to see the General Lee from
the Dukes of Hazard sitting at the traffic light beside us. The fight pretty
well shut down any possibility that our third child would arrive anytime in the
next year, but I do have a name ready for a boy or girl as a result.
Bobby Lee Benefield may or may not make an appearance, but that name will be
waiting on him or her if he or she doesJ.
We are much
more efficient in our fighting and getting over it routine at this point in our
lives than we were as newlyweds. We were both done being mad by the time
we got hungry for dinner (coincidence?). Already committed to riding our
bicycles everywhere (and that is hard to do mad), we pedaled off to dinner in
perfect harmony. We enjoyed another great meal at Seajay’s on Jekyll
Island and then rode around the island again. We logged about 25 miles on
our bikes that day and I include that fact only because we were proud of
ourselves for riding so far.
Our last
morning at Jekyll Island was great, too. We woke up early and collected
sea shells for our daughter Carlie. I actually prayed that we would find
a sand dollar for her, and we did. I forgot to specify that we needed a
dead sand dollar, so the one we found at the end of our beach walk was
alive. I have no doubts that God was teaching me a lesson after I
lectured Cammie on communication during our money fight. We threw the live
sand dollar back, got back on our bikes, and rode off to go get our truck.
As luck would
have it, the truck wouldn’t start, so we had even more bike riding to do.
Knowing that the truck would start if we waited a couple of hours (it does not
like ocean environments and has pulled this stunt before), we went to the beach
to hang out for a little while.
As soon as we
got to the beach, dozens of dolphins started playing just feet from the
shore. I have never been that close to so many dolphins in my life.
I am really glad we didn’t pay for a dolphin tour, because I am sure we would
not have seen as many as close. I know that many of you have heard the
myths about dolphins and moms to be, but I don’t think Cammie attracted these
(but Lord help us if she did).
The dolphins
ended our time on Jekyll Island on a high note, so we drove to Saint Simon’s
Island for lunch. We decided to eat at Barbara Jean’s Crab Cakes. On our
way in, we saw Heather Whitestone McCallum on her way out. Unfortunately,
we took too long to figure out who she was and missed an opportunity to speak
to her. For those of you who don’t know the connection, Heather and I are
both Jacksonville State University graduates and she was Miss Alabama before
she was Miss America in 1994.
Seeing Heather
was interesting, but it didn’t satisfy our hunger. We made our last meal
on vacation really count. Barbara Jean’s Crab Cakes (www.barbara-jeans.com) served up the
best meal we had during our entire trip. We ate so much it hurt, but,
with thanks to John Cougar Mellencamp, it hurt so good.
We drove
happily back to Warner Robins to find that my mother had survived her time with
her red-haired grand daughter and her toddler tornado grandson. It was
great to be home with our whole family, but I have to admit that planning on
next year’s vacation has already begun.
I hope all of
you are doing well and if you are planning a vacation, I hope sharing ours with
you helps.
