Lake Hartwell, SC...Part I

Good Monday morning! I am back from my weekend spent with David and his family at Lake Hartwell, South Carolina. It's too bad to come home to be greeted by TS Debbie and all this rain. It's so dreary, I do believe I could have stayed in my bed all day today and recuperated from our weekend.

However, we had a wonderful time at the lake. All of David's sisters and their husbands and/or children were able to come spend the long weekend together. I know his parents were over joyed to have everyone together since they are all spread out. David, as you know lives in Savannah, GA. His sisters live in Birmingham, AL, Greenville, SC, Raleigh, NC, and Hartford, CT. So as you can imagine, family get-togethers with everyone are few and far between. It was a very low-key weekend-with just a little bit of drama, thanks to Moxley!

I am going to break this up into several posts- so today I will just cover Friday. David was a gentleman this weekend and decided that he would do all the traveling, so he journeyed down to Thomasville on Thursday night to come pick me up so we could head out bright and early on Friday. Thankfully, we didn't have to leave at the crack of dawn because we didn't get the keys to the house until 4:00, so we were able to take our time. David, Moxley, and I loaded up and headed north on Friday.

Mox loaded up and ready for his looong ride!

 I think David was secretly happy to have Mox with us, so we couldn't stop at the outlet malls in Atlanta or Commerce. Ha!

No trip on GA HWY 300 is complete without a stop at either the Salt Lick or Striplings for some beef jerky! I wanted to get my picture taken with the hay bale pigs they have out front, but there were too many people outside and I didn't want to be "that" person. Ha!

We took a detour when we got to Atlanta and David drove me around his old neighborhood. He used to live in the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta and I really liked the feel of the area. Mox was enjoying being back in Atlanta and taking in the view. I was just relieved for the moment of peace not being driven through Atlanta. I get a tad bit anxious if I'm not the one driving....

Here are a few pictures from David's old hood:

David claims that this building is where the formula for Coke was concocted - or at the very least one of the first places it was made in Atlanta

Atkin's - David's old hangout. Our friend Laurie from Blountstown also lived in this neighborhood and they would always joke that they liked this place because it has a name similar to our park in Blountstown.

You can just barely see David's old house behind the fence.

We then got back on the road after acquiring the shrimp for that evening's shrimp and grits feast.

Yuck! It was crazy traveling up I-85, even at 2:00. We were hoping that we would miss all the weekend and commuting traffic. It wasn't too bad for us, but David's sister Frances who was coming from Birmingham wasn't so lucky. She had to creep through Atlanta and was delayed quite a bit.

We had a bit of excitement on the drive up. I had gotten David some scratch off tickets at Christmas and ever since, we have been able to keep playing due to winning a free ticket or $20 here and there. David had cashed in his last ticket and he kept it so I could scratch it off. And when I did, we had won $100! We were so excited.

Me and my "winning" ticket

If you can see this is a poker game and you win by beating the other hand. Obviously, I never play poker, but I thought that we had won. So we stopped at the first gas station so I could collect our winnings. We even had a strategy worked out- $50 cold hard cash, a $20 ticket and 6 $5 tickets. I strutted in the station to cash out only to be told that our ticket in fact wasn't a winner. Womp, womp, womp. Guess I didn't really look to make sure that our hand had in fact beat the house. I guess our 6 month winning had to end some time. It was fun while it lasted. I still felt like a major idiot though!

After over 6 long hours in the car. We finally made it to the lake house. Lake Hartwell was pretty sad. The lake is down about 9 feet than it normally is. I guess the major drought back in 2007 or 2008 really took a toll on it and it hasn't recovered yet. The lake house was on a little cove off of the lake and was pretty shallow.

Well, that's the adventures for Friday. Hopefully, I will be able to go ahead and post the rest of the weekend sometime today. If not, tomorrow it will be.