Noah & Sarah

It didn’t take Noah and Sarah too long to remember who Papa and Memere are.
It is wonderful getting reacquainted with them. You don’t realize how quickly young children change and we had only been gone 7 months. It has been extremely hot and most days too hot to be outdoors with the children.
A lawn sprinkler, in the shade of their backyard, was a way in which to stay cool. One afternoon after we pick up them from day care we let them play under the sprinkler and they had a blast. You can see from the photos that they were not afraid of the water or the mud. Bob did take Noah swimming one afternoon and Noah wants to be able to swim as well as his friend, Griffin, who is 6 months older than he is. With a little work and patience, Noah will be swimming before the cold weather sets in. Sarah is definitely feisty and not much seems to bother her and as long as she has a clean diaper, her bottle nearby and is fed.

Mount Pleasant, SC

We arrived on July 29 a few days before scheduled. The trip across the country was quick and we put on 2,848 miles. Amy and the kids have settled into a lovely house in Mount Pleasant close to her friends, Stacey, Jeff and Griffin.
While we were traveling across the country Chuck, Becky and Lucy came out to Mount Pleasant for their annual visit. They took the kids to have their portraits taken and the children were not in a co-operative mood. The attached photo is of Chuck, Amy, Noah, Sarah and Lucy.
After the disc is reviewed I will include some additional photos.
We have settled in at the local KOA campground.

Swansea, SC

Since our good friends, Joyce and Larry Wannamaker, have a full hook-up site on their property, and they were gracious enough to invite us. We took them up on their offer and stayed the nights of July 27 and July 28. Larry drove up from Mount Pleasant, SC to open his house for us and we had a great visit. We ate at a couple of local restaurants and dined on some real southern cooking. We got the annual preventative maintenance done on the motor home chassis while we were there at Vern’s who happens to be a relative of Joyce’s. Vern does a great job and goes through the whole chassis.
Our friends, Dean and Trip, who live in the area were away in Virginia antique hunting, and we will have to catch up with them later.

Birmingham, AL

We arrived on Wednesday and our first stop was to the dealer’s who was going to repair the A/C unit on the motor home. He was not busy and he looked at the unit immediately. Of course, a part had to be ordered which would not be in until Monday. We found a nice campground that had a pool and a shade tree. The Peters, Bob’s cousins, live in Hoover, AL which is a suburb of Birmingham. They invited us to dinner and it was great time visiting with Scott, Carrie and their 3 children, Jack, Stephanie and Michael.
Scott is in banking and Bob was able to catch up on all of the new laws concerning banking.
While in Birmingham, we took in the Civil Rights Museum, which is if we all remember our history, fought integration to the bitter end. The museum laid out the Civil Rights Movement both on a national and a local level. The museum itself is new so it brought the movement up into the present time which is the lst Civil Rights Museum that has taken it this far that we have seen.
Birmingham has a large, free of charge, art museum. The collections that they have on display are outstanding. We spent most of the day on Sunday and still had not seen all that the museum had to offer. It surprised us that a no charge museum would have such a variety of collections.
It was over 100 degrees so we also went to the movies one afternoon in order to stay cool.
The part for the A/C arrived on Monday which took about 10 minutes to put and then a half hour to check the A/C unit out and then we continued to make our way east.

Little Rock, AR

Traveling from San Francisco we just stopped for a few overnights until we got to the Little Rock area. North Little Rock has a city campground right on the AK River. Our site was right on the river overlooking downtown Little Rock. They have a trolley that runs from North Little Rock to downtown Little Rock and the Clinton Library. It was a great way to get around. Downtown Little Rock is a great little area with many shops and restaurants. The main reason for stopping here was to visit Clinton’s Library. The architect was hired to make the library look like a bridge The bridge was to represent bridging over into the 21st Century. I’m not certain that we would have gotten this concept by just looking at the building itself. The library was well done and since we were well aware of his 8 years as our President, it did remind us of all the changes that occurred in that 8 year span.
The Heifer Organization has its headquarters in Little Rock adjacent to the Library. This is a non-profit organization that takes farm animals to underdeveloped areas in the world, along with farming practices, to help these people raise food and livestock and to help provide them with a better way of life. Heifer works with many non-profit organizations as well in order to assist these underdeveloped countries.
The A/C unit on the front of the motor home still needed to be repaired. This unit was replaced in San Francisco. Trying to get a service call in SC was difficult and we made arrangements to have it serviced in Birmingham, AL. So off we went to Birmingham