Roam With Me! Tybee Island, Georgia, June 2020

During the isolation time of late March,  April and May, I started writing a new novel. The idea for it had been bouncing around in my head for a few years. I have multiple story ideas every single day, and, when possible, I write a few down from time to time because I think they are good and don't want to forget them. Inevitably, most of the ideas remain simply that -- ideas -- because I'd need a million lifetimes to write stories about every idea I have; however, a few of my ideas take up residence in my mind and send me a steady stream of reminders that it's time to sit down and try to make a story out of them. So, with plenty of writing time on my hands, I did just that, every single day for two or more hours each morning until the end of May. I still haven't completed the story because it's doing what most of my stories do -- leading me astray for a while -- but I have over 300 handwritten pages completed along with a stack of note cards full of things to fix or add or change, etc. So, what does all of this have to do with Tybee Island? Well, I wanted the story to take place on the east coast in a coastal town. I wanted it to be in North Carolina, South Carolina or Georgia. After some map perusal and web searches, I decided that Tybee Island looked like the perfect place, so that's where my new novel is set.

As I wrote, I often used the internet to look at photos of the island and the community, and I searched for little snippets to make it feel real. However, until I actually see and experience a place, I feel like I'm writing blindly about it, and even though I'm writing fiction, I still want the place to be real. In my first novel, "The Clearwater House," anyone from Clearwater, Nebraska, or even from rural Northeast Nebraska knows that the setting is very real even though the story is made up. While my inability to visit a place won't keep me from including that place if I feel it's the best place for my characters to be (Georgia visits Hawaii and Alaska -- two places I haven't yet been -- in "State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings"), I do believe that gaining a personal perspective makes for a better story. So, with a desire to actually see Tybee, I added a couple of days to my recent Tennessee visit, and we drove down to Tybee Island.

Since we arrived in late June on a Sunday, it was very hot and humid as well as packed with day trippers from Savannah, but by the next day, the island was much less packed even though it was still incredibly hot and humid. We stayed at a small inn -- a converted house -- called 17th Street Inn only a block from the beach and one of the handy boardwalks for crossing the sand dune. We had the first floor room on the left which contained a king-sized bed, a small bathroom with shower and a full kitchen. The porch stayed shaded all day and made for enjoyable evening sitting. 

The beach is lovely, expansive and quite clean. It stretches the full eastern side of the island and across the north side, too. Even though there were many people on the beach when we first arrived, there was still plenty of beach and ocean to go around, and when I stayed to watch the sunset and rose early for the sunrise, the beach and ocean in all their glory were mostly mine. I'll show you a photo with the late-afternoon Sunday crowd and a couple from late Monday and sunrise on Tuesday. 

Beautiful, isn't it? The water was just cool enough to take away the heat from our skin after sunbathing a bit. The waves were constant and only had enough force to throw me off my feet once when I wasn't paying attention. Otherwise, we just bobbed up and down with them. The sand was soft and full of tiny shells above the tide line, and it was hard-packed and great for walking in a wide swath that ran along the waterline.

Tybee Island has a couple trademark constructions. One is its lighthouse and the other is its pavilion and pier. We drove by the lighthouse but didn't go in it because tickets had to be purchased online in advance, and we simply lacked the time. Also, it was really hot and probably not the best time to be climbing stairs in a tall lighthouse. The pier and pavilion, though, we definitely walked on because I'd already included them in my novel-in-progress, so I really needed to see them up close. We also walked under the pier, so here are some photos from above and below as well as the lighthouse.

      

 

There are a couple places that offer dolphin excursions. We went to Captain Derek's, hoping to get lucky and still be able to get a ticket at the last minute. We managed to snag the last two tickets for the day on the 2:00 p.m. excursion. The boat took us out onto the north side of the island where dolphins are prevalent in the shallower water. We saw many, and it was well worth the 15 dollar per person price. Not only did we see a lot of dolphins, but the young narrator, a guy named Damian, regaled us with a litany of Dad-style dolphin jokes to help pass the time along with the dolphin-related educational information he shared. Example: What's a dolphin's favorite country? Finland! How are a piano and a fish different? You can't "tuna" fish! And many others. I loved them all because they reminded me of my wonderful co-worker, Nate Metschke, who passed away for too young a year and a half ago. He taught band and loved to tell "punny" jokes. Anyway, the dolphin excursion was fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone going to Tybee.

One of the main things I wanted to see for myself was how the houses looked as well as get a feel for the town. The houses vary from one story to two, so that fit in perfectly with the two main houses in my story, and I learned that Sandra Bullock's Tybee Island house is for sale -- you can find it on realtor.com if you look for the 3.5 million dollar house on the northern part of the island. If anyone reading this would like to find about thirty more people, we could all go in together and buy it! Ha ha. 

Like any beautiful place I visit, I would really like to return and spend a week or more on the island to soak in even more of the local flavor, but I managed to get a pretty solid feel for the town during my short stay. Overall, the food was good. I'm not a fan of seafood, so I can't speak to that particular fare, but the chicken and other sandwiches I ate while I was there was good, and I was especially happy to find that Diet Coke was served everywhere. I would, though, like to recommend the bar Tybee Time where you should go in and ask Rachel, a very nice bartender, to serve you one of their amazing rum/everclear/who-knows-really-what-kind-of-alcohol-infused slushies. I had a mango one, and it was super yummy and super cooling on a hot evening.

I'll just leave you with a few more beautiful beach shots because the beach and the ocean are the real reasons for visiting and living on Tybee Island.

Now, I'd better get back to writing that novel!

Roam With Me! Johnson City, TN, June 2020

A year ago, I briefly visited the areas of Johnson City and Gray, Tennessee, while on a retirement scouting trip with my boyfriend to Nashville and Asheville (NC). We were only in the area for a couple hours, but we really liked what we saw. My daughter is considering a few colleges to complete her studies to become a paleontologist, and ETSU in Johnson City has one of the premiere departments due to the 2000 discovery of a large fossil site at Gray, which is only a few miles from Johnson City. So, I once again drove to Johnson City -- this time for an extended visit with my daughter.

ETSU was still closed for official tours, but you can easily walk all over the campus because it's not that large, so she was able to get a feel for the college even without a representative giving us a tour.

Our main objective was for her to get a good glimpse of the Gray Fossil Site because if she chooses to apply and gets accepted at ETSU, then she will end up spending some of her time working at the site. She contacted Dr. Steven Wallace, a professor at the university and the original director of the site when it first opened. He was kind enough to meet us and give her a thorough tour along with ample scientific explanations that went over my head but that she firmly grasped. He also took us into the expansive and amazing upstairs lab where we met the main preparator, Shawn Haugrud, who wowed her even more with lots of information. I was most intrigued to learn that since the soil of the dig site is clay, all the fossils there have been crushed into thousands of pieces that then have to be reassembled much like a very complicated 3D puzzle that may or may not contain all the necessary pieces. They are doing some cutting-edge things at Gray, and I know my daughter would both benefit from working there and be beneficial to the cause because she's very diligent with her work and already has a lot of experience working with tiny fossil fragments. 

   

        The dig site itself is behind the building and isn't much to see yet because they estimate that they've only uncovered about 1% of what is there. In that 1%, though, they've found a staggering number of fossils, so there is work to be had at this one site for years and years and years and for many current and up-and-coming paleontologists. 

Naturally, I can't travel anywhere new without checking out the local bookstores. I hit up Book Lover's Warehouse, Mr. K's Used Books, and Moody Books. The latter has been around for almost 50 years and specializes in theological books for the most part. I didn't really find anything to my liking there, but I enjoyed seeing it. I most enjoyed Book Lover's Warehouse, and I would love to return to spend a full day there. Of course, I returned with some books to add to my home library. I also stopped at the Barnes and Noble to acquire the newest Pulitzer winner for fiction.

     

Another place that is a must-visit for me is the local Harley-Davidson store. I stopped in and bought myself a much-needed full-face helmet from an exceptionally friendly and knowledgeable woman named Paige who has worked in the Johnson City store for 21 years. She was extremely patient with me as I tried out all the gizmos on the helmet, and she made sure that I was satisfied with the fit. According to helmet measurements, my head is a small, which I find so strange since everything else on me (according to fashion sizing) is extra large and double digits. But my head measures 22 inches which puts it in the small size range. Believe it or not, sizing for helmets goes from XXS all the way to 5XL. I am only a smidge over the XS size, so I tried on both the XS and the S repeatedly until I was certain that I wanted to stick with the S. She's an experienced rider who also is a small for helmets but prefers an XS for added snugness, so she wanted me to be certain. The XS was just a bit too snug for my liking, though, I finally decided. I also left with another HD t-shirt for my collection and another poker chip (which didn't do anything for my desire to get one from every state since I already have an TN one from Nashville, but I really liked the chip and the Johnson City HD store).

No trip is complete without sampling local fare. We ate some great food while we were there. Since we arrived kind of late and many restaurants still weren't open to dine-in, we opted to eat at the Waffle House that was right next to the Hampton where we stayed. We'd never eaten in one before. I chose to actually try one of their waffles. It was pretty good, actually. We also ate at Aubrey's, a great restaurant serving American food as well as pasta which is what we ate; Southern Craft, where we sat at the bar and had some delicious libations as well as yummy barbecue; and Main Street Pizza, where the spaghetti and sausage meatballs was to-die-for delicious. At each place, we had incredibly friendly and helpful waiters who added to the dining (and drinking experience). 

       

 

       

Just a few miles west of Johnson City is the town of Jonesborough, which is the oldest town in Tennessee and home to the International Storytelling Center. The events for that are held in the fall, I believe, but the main street is quite historic and full of interesting places like the Christopher Taylor house where Andrew Jackson lived for a year. We ate at the Main Street Cafe, strolled through the town a bit, but a couple of the stores I would have liked to have visited were closed, so we left empty-handed but enjoyed the time spent there.

   

        

I'll leave you with one last selfie taken from Winged Deer Park in Johnson City. Hopefully, I'll be returning to the town or area in a year or so, either to visit or to live.