Spanish moss drapes over live oak trees in the creepiest of fashions. I could only be in one city, supposedly America’s most haunted, depending on whom you ask. Savannah, Georgia regales in the thought of being both beautiful and exceedingly spooky. Laid out on a series of grids, disrupted by over 20 public squares, driving up and down Savannah is enough to make you go mad. As I hit one square after the other, the roundabouts grow tiresome. Like being trapped in a maze, you can’t escape Savannah by design. The reason for its spooky nature does not just come in the way in which the Continue Reading
Charmed by Charleston, South Carolina
A woman weaves a sweetgrass basket for the tourists in Charleston, baskets that have been made for nearly 400 years in this area. Originally used to collect rice and cotton in the plantation fields, the baskets today come in all shapes, designs and price points. Charleston is a city of traditions, from the architecture to the food. From the minute I first met Charleston's streets, I was charmed by this southern city. Unlike any other in the United States, Charleston knows its past and isn’t afraid to show it in every way, shape or form. Perhaps that is why you seldom hear a bad thing about Continue Reading
Pawleys Island, South Carolina Wishes You Were Here
It is a Saturday, the perfect day for unadulterated laziness. The week is gone and the weekend has arrived. I hop in the car with coffee in hand on this Saturday morning to explore Pawleys Island. Crossing over a causeway, embraced by salt marshes on each side, the disconnect between the mainland to this barrier island lends the sensation of leaving it all behind, as only few places can. Just 70 miles north of Charleston and 25 miles south of Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island seems to forever remain floating in a lazy Saturday state of mind. The barrier island is less than four miles long, but Continue Reading
24 Hours of Ambling Around Asheville
I wonder what Thomas Wolfe really thought of Asheville, North Carolina. A man who would never live down penning the line, “You can’t go home again,” did have a home in Asheville and his remains are still here. George Vanderbilt would disagree about this mountain town, ideally located in Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountain territory. Not only could he make a home in Asheville, but he could envision what would become the largest home in America, one he would go home to again and again. Something tells me, the two probably wouldn’t see eye to eye, or home to home. Arriving in Asheville Continue Reading
The Outer Banks Wish You Were Here
Flashes of lightening send the sky into an identity crisis between blinding light and extreme darkness. Rain lends a natural carwash, sounding more like sprinkles meeting the ground after falling from the kitchen cabinet. The mad dash indoors begins. One. Two. Three. Go. This night seems fitting for my first on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The Outer Banks of North Carolina stretch from the Virginia state line to Cape Lookout in the south, joined by bridges and ferries. A storm far greater than the one I am in tonight decided to rip through this vulnerable stretch just weeks before my Continue Reading
They Taught Us To Fly
“I hate flying,” the man seated next to me said. I instantly started to consider the little boy on a previous flight, who proudly told the pilot the flight was fun. Flyers become jaded at a certain point. There are so many factors working against enjoying flying, I suppose. I sat back as the plane took a bumpy landing, just before rejoining the ground in Tulsa. I began my trip out to North Carolina, where I am now, with a plane ride. It has become so routine. We board a flight. We hope it travels safely. And then, we land. What I don’t always consider is just how impressive it is, how Continue Reading
Moonlight Over Greece in Tennessee
Long days spent in the car have forced my sightseeing to take to the night. Tonight my moonlight moseying brings me to Greece. The blaring neon lights of Broadway along with those stumbling to see the light from bar after bar seem far from any Greece I have envisioned. And then, lit up like a Christmas tree, a lone monument imitating one in Greece stands in Nashville, Tennessee, of all places. The Parthenon was built to look just like its original in Athens, the one with traces back to 438 B.C. However, this testament to construction and Athena was built for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Continue Reading