Road Trip

There’s No Place I’d Rather Be Roaming

29054 - GilbertHere is an outtake from today’s Postal shoot for my sister-in-law-in-law. Hi Beth We left the house at 8:00 AM and followed two-lane blacktop, except for a brief stint in Lexington, on a couple hundred mile loop through rural South Carolina gathering 10 new additions to the Postal Gallery, the nine listed yesterday and a last minute addition, home of the Annual South Carolina Peanut Party, Pelion.

Would have been more, but we only snapped one of the three reported post offices in Lexington, because when we got there around noon the traffic was thick as molasses. About the only thing Lexington was good for today was lunch. We stopped and ate at a Maurice’s BBQ there. One Little Joe basket, one Sauci-Chick, sweet tea for me and water for her.

Meal Cost: $14.62
Tip: None
Spent Today: $14.62
Year to Date: $439.66

 
It was around 40 when we started the trip this morning, so the top stayed up until White Rock. I’ve got all ten photos uploaded, but I have yet to write blurbs for them, so for tonight, you can easily figure out which ones are fresh (I wish there was a way to highlight the new entries into this photo album thing…). For an extra hint, they are all on the front page, except for the above mentioned White Rock.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 54

With the Tress and the Horses and the Rocks and the Sheep

Lunch at the Stoplight Deli. We split a California Pita and a bowl of chili with two waters to wash it down.

Meal Cost: $10.87
Tip Jar: 13¢
Spent on Lunch: 11.00
Year to Date: $385.17

 
Ate diner out with friends at the Patagonia Grill, a new South American restaurant in Evans, GA. I had an Americanized version of Anticuchos, marinated pork on a skewer. Donna had Anticuchos de Camaron, grilled shrimp on skewers and covered with a white wine sauce. Again, waters to drink. Good food that definitely warrants a return visit..

Meal Cost: $33.87
Forced Tip: $6.00
Spent on Dinner: $39.87
Year to Date: $425.04

 
The Emperor got a sponge bath (Meguiar’s Quik Detailer and a towel) this afternoon in preparation for tomorrow’s nine city Post Office Road Trip. Prosperity, Little Mountain, Chapin, White Rock, Ballentine, Lexington, Gilbert, Leesville & Wagener.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 53

Breakfast in America

Breakfast in NewberryWell, Newberry, SC is in America. This morning was the first of a monthly event called Miatas for Breakfast where the MMC will go for early morning eats. It will take place on the 3rd Saturday of the month at a place that is near or far and may involve a drive before or after.

Today we drove to Bill & Fran’s for eggs in the Milk and Egg Capital, Newberry. Capitol of what, county, state, country, or world the egg shaped water tower isn’t saying. One egg scrambled with bacon, grits and toast for her, one egg scrambled with sausage, grits and biscuits for him. Order of hash browns to split, coffee for him and water for her.

Meal Cost: $11.67
Tip: $2.33
Spent Today: $14.00
Year to Date: $369.17

After dining, I convinced the other Miatas to follow me to the Newberry Post Office so I could take PO Picture #50 with 5 Miatas filling the parking lot. From there we went into the heart of the small town and looked for early morning places that were open so we could get out of the wind and cold. Apparently when the sign on the doors of the downtown antique places say they open at 10:00 AM on Saturday, it is only a guideline.

One place that was open on Main St made $3 off of us, they had a selection of Girl Scout cookies, mmmm, Caramel deLites. They then directed us to another place that was open just one block over, a real live throw back of a hardware store. Very interesting place, stuff stuffed into every nook and cranny, everything from ax handles to bear traps, light switches to cylinders of welding gases, from snowboards (WTF?) to keys made, from spittoons near the wood stove to a Nobel Prize. Well, actually it is a bronze replica of William F. Shull’s (the owner of the store) grandfather’s prize. Clifford G. Shull was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in neutron scattering, a technique that involves directing a beam of particles produced by a nuclear reactor at a sample of material.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 45

49 Down and 318 To Go

According to the idiots who started me on this quest, there are 367 Post Offices in South Carolina. After today’s 160 mile, seven PO trip we are 13% of the way towards the goal of getting a picture of everyone.

We stopped in Greenwood after getting both Post Offices there for some lunch at a place called T.W. Boon?s. We split a Shrimp Po-boy, Onion Rings and a Sierra Mist.

Meal Cost: $8.56
Tip: $1.44
So Far Today: $10.00

The Postal Gallery Database site says 367, but I can not get a definitive list from the US Postal Service site. If I search from Columbia (which is pretty much in the center of the state) with a hundred mile radius I get 488 results. This probably isn’t accurate because it may include surrounding states, when I search from Aiken for a 100 miles it starts to list Augusta, Georgia POs.

Wikipedia lists 541 Zip Codes in the state. When I went through that list and removed the ones that said PO Box after the name I end up with 404. But I know that isn’t right because there are only 2 Post Offices in Aiken and I was left with 4 zips. Plus there were 5 or 6 names I removed that I recognized as having buildings (because I have pictures of them), so I’m thinking that the PO Box designation means there is no carrier service in those locations.

The USPS site may not even be 100% accurate as to how many it has either. When we first started this quest it listed a Post Office in the micro-town of Snelling, SC and no amount of driving the few streets in that town using the USPS site’s map resulted in a find. Same thing happened in Hilton Head where we could only find two of the four the site had listed for there. Searching today lists no P.O. for Snelling and 3 for Hilton Head.

Anyway, we may never know if we get all of them, but we sure are going to try.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 39

Tonight we had dinner out with friends at Olive Oils right here in Aiken. Grilled Chicken Breast topped with Proscuito and Cheese for him. Seafood Ravioli for her. Water to drink. All the salad and breadsticks you can eat included.

Meal Cost: $29.68
Tip: $5.32
Spent This Meal: $35.00
Spent Today: $45.00
Year to Date: $333.67

4 PO Day

29921 - FurmanI had three maps to Post Offices I wanted to try and get pictures of on the way home from HHI. Ended up with only two of them, Ridgeland and Furman (pictured), missing Scotia as I had the map labeled wrong and didn’t realize we were by it, until we were by it. We did pass right by two more, Tillman and Estill, and so we took advantage of the opportunity and snapped their portraits. Drove right by Pineland’s Post Office, but didn’t stop as it was a little trailer with a small dirt parking lot that was full of folks checking their mail. Going to put Pineland at the top of the list for our next trip that way. May re-shoot Furman when I do that run too. It is such a cute little Post Office and I’d like to get a picture of it without the blue minivan in it.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 31

Thelma and Louise

We made a trip up to Chesterfield, SC today to see Donna’s cousin and her husband. We were supposed to go up on Friday, but fate put a big dent in those plans for us Thursday evening.

Donna’s Aunt Mary was staying there in Chesterfield, probably for the rest of the winter. She had come down after Thanksgiving and had to be hospitalized because she was getting dizzy. After a couple of days in the hospital the doctors turned her loose, unsure what was wrong, but blaming it on her worsening emphysema. They put her on oxygen and told her it might be best if she didn’t return to NJ until the weather warmed up. When we last visited in early December she didn’t look like the same person that we had seen last July. She had lost weight and was having trouble walking because of the breathing issues.

Thursday when Laurie and her husband Ted returned from his dialysis they found her on the kitchen floor. She had fallen a couple hours earlier and she couldn’t get up because her hip was broken. She was rushed to a hospital in Rockingham, NC where she passed away a couple hours later from respiratory failure.

Mary and Donna’s mother were not only sister-in-laws, but they were best friends, having met in college long before they met the brothers they would end up marrying. Barbara was short and stocky and Mary was tall and thin. They were perfect travel companions because Barbara drove, but had no sense of direction while Mary was afraid to drive (living in Jersey like she did, who could blame her) but was a born navigator. The two of them visited each other a couple times a year and there was always a trip together in there somewhere. They earned the nicknames Thelma and Louise when they drove from Seattle to Aiken when Donna’s mom moved in with us. They even started signing their Christmas cards to each other that way.

So long Mary, we’ll miss you here on earth, but we know you are happy to be reunited with your traveling partner again.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 17

Statesboro Blues

Bulloch County Courthouse After fifteen hundred fourteen miles in six and a half days, we are home again.

When we left last Sunday we ate breakfast on the way out of town at Aiken’s New Moon Cafe and as a nice bookend to the trip, our last meal on the road was a quesadilla for lunch at Statesboro, Georgia’s The Blue Moon. While I’m not really ready to call it a theorem, it is definitely a postulate: Moon=Good Food – to wit, any restaurant in the downtown area of a small to medium sized town with the word Moon in it’s name will serve good food in a funky hip kind of style.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 482