Georgia Trip Day 5: The Georgia Pig

Day five of the Georgia trip and we were sad to see it come to an end.  I had a fantastic time meeting Will's family, eating delicious foods, and seeing a new place.

We packed up the house and prepared to leave.  The rocking chairs had to come in from the porch, and John and Ellen packed a bag of the key limes from the Will and Anna tree, which I carefully stored in my carry-on luggage.

On the way from Sea Island to the Jacksonville airport, we stopped by at the Georgia Pig, a small brown shack with pictures of Elvis Presley hanging on the walls amidst more pig paraphernalia than I could ever imagine.  It was the best BBQ I have ever eaten: a tangy pork pressed sandwich with extra BBQ sauce in squirt bottles on the table, coleslaw, baked beans, and sweet tea.  We paused to take a picture outside:

Click through and you can see the "GA Pig" sign above the rocking chairs.

We had a fantastic trip and cannot wait to return.  Love, Will and Lauren

Georgia Trip Day 4: Sea Island

A lazy Saturday in Sea Island.  The weatherman predicted rain, so we'd already squeezed in all of our outdoor activities on Friday.  That left Saturday as the perfect day for catching up on sleep.  Still woke up around 9am.  Dad had prepared "Grits Lauren," which is made with chicken stock, a little garlic, and some sauteed leeks.  Grandbetty and other grits traditionalists (like me) don't know what to make of it, but Lauren can't get enough.  More of a fancy polenta than grits at that point.  Tasty enough in my opinion, but I think Lauren would eat it every morning if she could.

After breakfast, Lauren and I again jogged down to the beach, where we ran into Lee, Betsy, and Elizabeth.  They told us that the walk along the beach to the jetty was very nice.  It didn't look too far, so off we went.

Well, objects on the beach can be much farther than they appear.  By the time we got to the jetty, we were worried about making it home in time to say goodbye to Grandbetty and the other Robinsons leaving on Saturday.  So, we ran the half-mile or so along the beach in addition to the expected run home.  Running on the beach is hard work!

We arrived home to find that we still had hours before the crew was heading back to Atlanta.  So we showered up.  Emerging from the shower, I found out that after a hard run, what Lauren wanted more than ANYTHING was ... well, it was more grits.  So we had some more grits, leftover tomato soup, some of Grandbetty's Seven-Vegetable Salad, and biscuits.

After lunch, Lauren and I visited with Grandbetty and my parents on the back porch, and snapped a few photos in the back yard:

Then, it was time to say goodbye to Grandbetty and the Lee Robinson family as they drove back to Atlanta.

After seeing them off, we headed up to the Beach Club to relax, read our books, and (in Lauren's case) down another Coke float:

We quickly ran home to change for dinner.  Here's Lauren and I on the joggling board:

We then made our way to the Lodge on St. Simon's island to listen to the bagpiper at dusk and sip cocktails.

Then we drove a short distance to the Georgia Sea Grill.  Really good bread to start, then tasty fish all around the table (so they tell me), and a chicken piccata for me.

Last stop was in front of the TV at home, where we watched the movie version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, mainly for the thrill of seeing a movie filmed largely in the house we'd just visited.

Grandbetty's Seven-Vegetable Salad recipe

A big hit with Lauren, and pretty easy to make from the sound of things:

Drain and mix:

• 1 can LeSeurs baby English peas.
• 2 cans cut green beans (after cutting them a bit more).
• 1 oz. white niblit corn (canned).
• 1 small jar pimento.
• 3 or 4 good pieces of celery (chopped)
• 2 packages of scallions (chopped, without the white part).
• 1 yellow pepper (chopped).

Create marinade of:

• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper

Warm the marinade just until sugar dissolves (don't boil).  Mix marinade with veggies.  Leave in fridge at least overnight.  Drain, then serve.  Keeps for about a week.

Georgia Trip Day 3: Sea Island

Good morning! The day started with a breakfast of biscuits, bacon, grapefruit, and oranges and the Wall Street Journal. Then off to shooting with Will, a real treat at Sea Island.

Here's Will waiting to shoot and looking very manly and handsome with that shotgun broken across his knees:



The guys at the Sea Island shooting school were very kind; Will had taken shooting lessons from Frank, a shooting school instructor who ran the place for 60 years, and one of the guys manning the front told Will that Frank and his father had been hunting buddies. It was quite manly. Our instructor, Jimmy, gave careful instructions about leaning into the gun, pointing smoothly and steadily, and keeping my right cheek tight against the top of the gun so that it would follow my line of sight.

Here's me in my tennis skirt, looking much less manly than Will, more like a ballet dancer with a big gun:

The clays flew over the golden marshes and I almost felt like a real hunter going to face the wild. Jimmy was such an expert coach that he was able to figure out that my gun moved erratically when the clays went to my left side; from this, he deduced that my right eye was stronger, and advised me to close my weaker left eye. This was so helpful that my consistency improved immediately. When I complimented Will on his excellent shooting, Will said that it was from playing video games -- and Jimmy said that, although people laugh, it's true. Video games will improve your shooting.

Then off to the tennis courts. I had never seen clay courts before, so this was new and fun -- kind of like playing on coarse, tightly packed dark green sand.  I am a terrible tennis player but love chasing after the ball so much (I swear I was a cocker spaniel in a former life) and Will is nice enough to be very patient with me.  AND I got to wear the preppiest, most pink-and-sea-green outfit in my life, and it was not a bit out of place -- people REALLY dress like this here!  I was overjoyed:

Then we showered and joined Ellen and John at the Beach Club for lunch.

The Beach Club is beautiful -- it looks something like the beach lobby at a major hotel such as the Four Seasons on Lana'i might look -- lots of beautiful open space and huge sprawling pools.  John had found some boiled peanuts and I was thrilled to eat them.  Lunch was at Big George's, named after a long-time employee of Sea Island, whom we got to meet on the way over.  George had huge black-and-white pictures all over the walls of the restaurant, some nearly lifesized, in different areas of the resort -- handing ice cream to kids, or standing in a suit under the palms, or lording over the salad bar.  It was really something.  I had a swordfish sandwich with fried green tomatoes.

Then a restful afternoon at the Beach Club.  We spent some time reading outside of the Beach Club Coffee Shop, then took a few minutes to walk down to the shoreline and look at the water.  Apparently baby Will and Anna spent many hours body surfing in this water, and Will and I spent some time reminiscing.  After a stop at the ice cream shop at my request (a rootbeer float -- a classic and still the best), we returned to the Robinson's house at Sea Island.

For dinner we went to Halyards, a nice place with delicious wine and the best steak that Will has eaten since Bern's in Florida:

All in all, a great day with lots accomplished!  Tomorrow perhaps drinks and bagpipes!

Georgia Trip Day 2: Thanksgiving Day

We had a lovely Thanksgiving Day in Sea Island.  Lauren and I began the day with an easy run to the beach - one mile each way, with a lot of beach-wandering in the middle.  Lauren's puppy-summoning superpower was evident once again, as the beach was completely empty except for a lone old man and his adorable puppy.

Lauren also marveled at some large horseshoe crabs washed up on the beach, claiming she'd never seen anything like them:

After the run, we got cleaned up and had a simple breakfast.  Dad read aloud from the Mayflower's post-Thanksgiving journal (reprinted in the Wall Street Journal each year).  Then, lots of quiet reading and working time at home until lunchtime, when the smells of Aunt Betsy's tomato soup called us to the kitchen.

After lunch, Lauren and I grabbed a car and visited historic Fort Frederica, where Anna and I had spent many childhood afternoons wondering how the adults could spend so much time looking at old stuff.

Lots of personal touches and exposed, original home foundations made me feel surprisingly connected to people who had lived out their lives here so long ago.

On the way home from Frederica, Lauren "politely asked" if we might be able to find some coffee.  iPhone to the rescue.  We managed to find the one coffeeshop on St. Simon's Island still open at 4:30pm on Thanksgiving: Palm Coast Coffee.  And what a coffeeshop it turned out to be!  Owner had stories from prep school in Menlo Park, CA.  Coffee was amazing.  Jazz music set just the right tone.  The couches were cozy; the ocean, near.  We curled up with our books and sipped away until it was time to go home and prep for dinner.

Dinner was at the newly revamped Cloister, which switched to a buffet this year.  The buffet was expansive and delicious.  I think Lauren may have had sweet potatoes and sweet (SWEET!) tea at every single meal since arriving in Georgia.  (They're trying to make up for a lifetime deprived of those delicacies, I think).  Thanksgiving favorites of turkey+stuffing were right at home next to local treats like Brunswick stew and pralines for dessert.  Brunswick stew might have been the best I've had.

We took a short walk through the Cloister after dinner, spending a few minutes gawking at the meeting table used at the 2004 G8 summit held in Sea Island.  The Cloister has kept one room exactly as I remember from childhood, but everything else is new.  Doesn't seem much better or worse to me, just different.

Lauren, Mom, Dad, Grandbetty and I passed on the post-dinner bingo game, and headed home for some conversation and an early bedtime.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Georgia Trip Day 1: Savannah

Travel to Georgia! Yesterday Will and I spent a long time on the plane -- several hours to Cincinnati and them one to Jacksonville, Florida -- and I got to see the acrobatics of poor 6' 7" Will fold into an airplane seat for several hours.  We look pretty happy here:

But don't be fooled; Will at this point is pretty tired.  I on the other hand slept just fine for nearly the whole ride.

We rode to Sea Island in the dark, and I was struck by the golden wheat-colored marsh grass and the Spanish moss hanging from all the trees.

In the morning we travelled to Savannah, Georgia, which was very exciting because I had just finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, a journalist from New York who lived in Savannah and wrote character sketches of the people living there in order to give a sense of the place.

Our first stop was Mrs. Wilkes' House, a former boarding house that served such delicious food around the family-style table that visitors began just showing up for the meals.  We all sat at a huge table of about ten, with two other families, and passed around perhaps twenty dishes filled with Southern food, such as beige-colored black-eyed peas, lima beans, sweet potato mash with a little bit of spicyness, sweet sweet tea, corn biscuits, hot greens with vinegar and peppers, rice with gravy, barbeque, carrot salad, potato salad, stuffing, and of course the famous fried chicken (Mrs. Wilkes' motto: "If the colonel made chicken this good, he'd be a general.")

We had a fantastic time and left the restaurant stuffed.

Then for a walk around the town to Mercer House, which was in a book I just finished.  The author John Berendt was a journalist from New York who lived in Savannah, Georgia and wrote character sketches of the people living there in order to give a sense of the place.  The main plot of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil revolves around Mercer House, whose owner, Jim Williams, was an antique restorer who was wealthy, fashionable, and probably gay.  Williams shot and killed his young male lover in the study of Mercer House, was acquitted after trials spanning several years, and then a year later also died of a sudden heart attack in the same room.

We took a tour of the house, looking at all of Williams' beautiful antiques and glamorous party pictures, and even got to see the infamous study.  This is Will and I in front of Mercer House.

 We closed the day with a visit to a cute shop called the Paris Market that Ellen found online.  In the back of the shop next to a sunny window was a cafe, where Will and I enjoyed some (needed) caffinated drinks and I ate a gigantic lemon marshmallow.

Then back to Sea Island.  We arrived just in time to meet Will's grandmother, as well as Aunt Betsy, Uncle Lee, and cousins Elizabeth, John, and Caroline.  Ellen had a beautiful table prepared, with foliage from around the house and nearby landscapes, and we enjoyed another delicious meal of vegetables, pork, and rolls.  It was an amazing day.