Week One

I'm writing this from Plainville, Connecticut, capital of tacky patriotism and colorful knickknacks. The house we're visiting is in a circle of homes that seem to be competing for the prize of most indescribably odd. In the middle of the circle is a giant stage and pavilion. I imagine that's where they hold trial when one of the neighbors forgets to hoist an American flag.

It's beautiful here, though. The weather is somewhere around perfect, the new friends are entertaining, and the next leg of the trip is about to begin. This is the first chance I've had to stop and write about where we've been. So here we go...let's start from the beginning.

And the beginning comes from last weekend in Bradenton. Caroline and Grahm threw a going away party on Saturday in their new house, with great friends and delicious food and all sorts of goodness. The next day the family all went over to my mom's house to see us off, including Kathryn just back from Jacksonville and Ryan and Leah with baby Wyatt. In those two days I enjoyed and appreciated my family more than I know how to say here. And I can't think of a better way to start the trip.

So we left Sunday afternoon in time to join a bunch of Jacksonville friends for dinner and conversation and, of course, some riveting telephone pictionary. Thank you again to everyone who was there and especially to the girls who opened their house for us.

We visited with friends in Jacksonville until 3 in the morning, when we left for Macon. Dawn on the backroads in southern Georgia was absolutely beautiful, offering our first experience with below-Florida temperatures. We had breakfast and showers in Macon, then continued on to Atlanta where we visited with some of Britton's family and our friends Mathias and Amanda. Atlanta was vaguely stressful, and I was ready to move on, but it was wonderful to spend time with our friends and their growing baby boy.

Tuesday morning we left Atlanta in search of the Georgia Guidestones, which Britton had read about in a magazine. More on those in a minute, but first there's a lake. We were trying to find those guidestones--some might say we were lost, but I prefer to say exploring--when we stumbled on a forested park at the side of a lake and we absolutely had to stop. We used Grahm and Care's camp stove to make sandwiches and soup for lunch, then went for a swim before getting back to our exploring. Glorious.

Okay. So let me tell you about these guidestones. A few decades ago a group of people, led by a Mr. Christian, decided to build a sort of Stonehenge in the middle of nowhere, with a message in about ten different languages. The idea is that, after mankind has pretty much killed itself off, a group of survivors will be wandering through Georgia and will stumble upon these rocks that tell them how to rebuild their society. We'll try to put pictures up soon, but for now I'll just say that it was strange. Maybe surreal. And oddly inspiring. More on that another time.

This is getting entirely too long and I don't want to overwhelm you. Part two after breakfast.