A friend took this while we were in Idaho. Star Gazer is on the hard a bit to the left.

Still here, but hope to leave on Wednesday. Brunswick Landing marina primarily provided slips. A number of people like us lived on their boat while there and some stay many months. Hinckley marina in Savannah is a boat yard with a few slips for transients. I don’t think anyone stays here long term. They have a reputation for good work and we had a few things that needed fixing after our long shakedown cruise out of Florida. We had to move off the boat while they did some of the work so we scheduled it to be the same time as our trip back to North Idaho for my high school reunion and my company’s picnic the next week. Since nearly all of our relatives other than our kids live in that area, and the cousin that doesn’t was also going to the reunion we were able to see a lot of people in 10 days. After that we spent 5 days in Austin seeing the rest of our family.

When we got back July 16^th, the boat was not ready and we had no place to stay. They had somehow got the idea we were coming back days later.

 One of many Savannah squares and us on the Biltmore back porch

We had been planning to see the Biltmore estate in Asheville, NC, the largest home in the US. It was only a 4 hour drive from Charleston, the closest we could get on the waterway. It only took a half hour more from Savannah, so there we went. We spent two days seeing Biltmore, and it was great. We left in the morning on the Blue Ridge Parkway which goes right through Asheville. We took that to Great Smokey Mtn national park and drove through some of that. We went to Clingman’s Dome, the highest point. Not much view with clouds all around that day. The signs there say that even on a good day you can only see one fifth as far as years ago due to pollution. We also drove through Cade’s Cove and stopped a few places. Interesting but nothing spectacular like the western parks we have visited. We popped out of the park on the other side to Pigeon Forge, TN, the home of Dollywood.

Well, we just had to go see that. It had a lot of fairly normal rollercoasters and theme park stuff, but we just took in shows. I’m not sure I should admit it, but I liked it! Sue liked it too. They had Gospel Quartets, the kind with the super bass singer, that she grew up on. In her younger days her friends and her saved their money so when these groups came to San Jose they could go see them. They also had good bluegrass bands. We had a good day there.

I got a call from the marina that day that the boat was back in the water. A boat has to be in the water to live on it. I suppose you could live in it when it’s on the hard but no one does. You would have to climb a ladder just to get to the swim platform which is seven or more feet up. The real difficulty in Georgia is that the A/C is water cooled and so won’t be working.

We got back and found a few more things needed doing. Tuesday the day after labor day they will be finished, so we plan to leave Wednesday morning early.