Adventures, Random Thoughts, and A Little Zen

Adventures, Random Thoughts, and A Little Zen
Boneyard Beach, Bull Island, Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Blending In With The Locals

Miki gets up around 7-7:30 (I know, can you believe she is sleeping in like that?) and walks the dogs.  I roll out of bed, maybe around 8ish and we do breakfast.  Then..."What do you wanna do today? ...  I don't know, what do you wanna do?" ... and the day unfolds from that.  

Today, I rode around Dillon Lake on one of the many paved bike paths around the area.  It is relatively flat around the lake until you get to Swan Mountain, the opposite side of the lake from where we are.  From there it takes about 30 minutes for me to get to the top, through the help of switch backs and gentle inclines through wooded and open areas.  From the top down, you join the regular road, which takes you 3 minutes to coast down.  Overall it is about an hour and a half ride to circle the lake and back to the campground and adds up to about 19 miles.  I do okay until I have to breath hard and my lungs search for oxygen that apparently isn't there.  I thought I was doing pretty well until I was passed by a young woman on what appeared to be a one-speed bike.  I caught her at the top, where we both took a break, but I beat her down the other side (more mass was on my side!).  From our window we can see the bike trail as it asses the campground.  There were a crazy number of people out riding today.  A fair amount of bike rentals...you could tell by the difference in speed.

We ran errands in the middle of the day.  You would think that being on vacation (as extended as it may be) errands would not overshadow activities like hiking and fishing, but they do.  Especially when Miki suggested hitting DQ again for their BOGO on Blizzards...yes, I said MIKI.  It kind of went like this... Staples...DQ (too busy, very slow with two people running the place)...Target... WalMart... Safeway... DQ (busier than before)... post office... home.  We like our BOGO Blizzards, but not that much, I am sure she will suggest it another day.

Crashed late afternoon until dinner.  Afterwards we headed over to the Frisco Marina for a summer send off celebration of sorts.  They did not get to shoot off their city fireworks this summer due to high fire danger, so they put it off until now.  A blues/jazz band played for a couple of hours before the fireworks.  They played earlier in the summer here and were invited back for this occasion.  They were good, but it was like each song bled into the next and you didn't even need to change the speed of your head bob to go with the beat...they all sounded very similar.  It helped pass the time and we people watched until dark, while sipping on hot chocolate (me) and cafe mocha (Miki).  We were surrounded by dogs, a cowboy, a breast feeding momma, dogs, badly dressed women, crazed kids, dogs, a woman that sat in dog poo, and kids wondering why they were there.
Old school bikes seemed to be the thing, we saw many.
Bad fashion sense was overflowing according to me and
thank goodness, otherwise I would have fallen asleep.
The early crowd, but they kept coming and easily filled the park by the marina.
The younger crowd came prepared for the long haul.
One of many big dogs.  This one was better behaved than his owner.
Dog in stroller, not sure where the baby ended up.
Almost more interesting than the people watching was the pet watching.
And how bad the owners were at controlling their dogs.  There were dozens
and dozens of dogs with many, many bad owners.
Coors was abundant.
The band we could see.  A large speaker blocked out whatever else was there.
The finale!

Good day.



My Zen from the Road:  People watching is fun and it is easy to pick targets out to entertain yourself.  More importantly it makes me appreciate me for me and Miki for Miki, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
It's hard being perfect!

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