This was a free day, the morning taken up with Marcia doing laundry and my trying to get our WiFi to work at the campground coffee shop (1 hour free with purchase, no success).
In the afternoon we drove south a half-hour to Pawleys Island. Planters had summer homes here to escape the threat of malaria. It is now a strip of relatively modest cottages, a few dating to just prior to the Civil War. The island is a couple miles long and 100 yards to a quarter mile wide, ocean on one long side and marsh land on the other. Closely spaced wooden piers extend into the marsh, most ending in a small gazebo. Canoes or other flat bottomed boats hang from davits. Some gazebos are topped by egrets intently watching the marsh; others with fake owls, intently watching nothing. The tide is very low and no one is around, other than clusters of fishermen on the bridge connecting the island and mainland.
On the ocean side the beach is very shallow with probably a hundred yards difference between high and low tides. People are walking about enjoying the comfortable temperatures, some collecting seashells.
Pawleys Island looks like a delightful place to spend a do-nothing short vacation.
We had our final GAM tonight, organized by Marcia to cover the people missed in GAMs 1-5. Tonight we had Ed and Susan, he retired from the US Forest Service, and she from the schools. They live in Sonora (the only other Californians on the caravan) but had not previously done much camping. Then there is Ralph, who worked for several large industrial companies and is now retired, as is his wife Sylvia, an RN; they travel maybe 7-8 months a year, on their own and connecting with caravans when they can. Fred and Searcy are retired and also travel fulltime, although they each own houses in Texas; they and their spouses knew each other at least fifty years, and Fred and Searcy married about five years ago when their spouses died. Finally we have Jean who used to own a trucking company but has been full-timing for many years. His wife died and he recently met Carolyn, a widow of an Airstreamer, and they are now traveling together. Jean wears funny hats and cowboy shirts with souvenir-covered suspenders and polyester pants; although from New Jersey, earlier in the trip he would play Dixie across his CB PA each morning and evening. That has stopped, but he is now wearing a Confederate hat. This is Jean's second time on this caravan, and he plans to go again next year. Jean is always in good cheer.
After the GAM we all adjourned to a campfire social and made ‘smores. For dinner I had four, Marcia two. Airstreamers don’t usually do campfires. It was good to smell the smoke and eat the ‘smores as it reminded me of our years of camping with Andrew and Kevin and Brian and Erika. All it needed (aside from people under sixty) was a ghost story from John.
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