The Golden Isles -- The Silver Year

Next month Hubs and I celebrate our Silver Anniversary.  A few years ago Hubs would ask me, "What are we going to do for our 25 year anniversary?"  And I would say I didn't know, but I knew I really didn't want to go somewhere and stay in a hotel and spend lots of money.  When you get as old as I am you really do know who you are and for this anniversary we are going to do what we loved to do during those first early years together--and that is to go on a road trip and camp, alone with no kids.

The Golden Isles off the coast of Georgia are undeveloped, understated and quiet.  We are going to Cumberland Island, somewhere I've wanted to go for awhile, a place only accessible by ferry or private boat, maintained as a National Park and limits the number of people who can visit in a day (300).  Most people take the 45 minute ferry ride for a day trip and only 60 are able to camp there at night.

Beyond the campground is a boardwalk to the beach.  You can rent bicycles and look at the ruins called Dungeness built by the Carnegie family in the 1800's but burned in 1959.  It had 6-foot thick walls and 16 fireplaces:

It is 17 miles long with no cars, just wild horses.

We bought a two-person tent since the large one we took on our road trip across the country this past summer is too big and the  mats we used to sleep on when we were in our 20's have been replaced by a queen-sized blow up mattress.  You can bring as much as you want on the ferry and carts are provided to get the gear from the dock to the campground.  Reservations were made almost 6 months ago.  At first we thought we would go in April, closer to our actual anniversary, but it was booked six months ago and we were happy with a weekend in March--thinking it would be cooler.  It's been summer-time hot in Georgia so it may be sticky, and it may be rainy but it is going to be very special.

We have farmed the three boys out to three different families, and for Youngest son I also coordinated an additional family to  pick him up from original family to take him to his flag football game.  I have been feeling a little off-kilter the past couple of days due to what this flag football mom said to me the other day.  When she heard that we were going camping for our big anniversary she asked all wide-eyed, "Is this something that You want to do?"  And I said yes.  Then after the game this past weekend, I told the group of a couple other moms and dads there we know that we wouldn't see them next week but that Youngest would be there, and a couple of them asked what we were doing.  When we told them another mom made a similar comment and the dads were kind of staring at us and one of them told us how the boy scouts go there on a camping trip (not him and his son--perhaps older boys).  These three other boys are cub scouts (my son is not) and the annual routine is the camp at nearby places and it is a dad thing and the women do not go and are glad they do not.

Later that night I was telling Hubs that I felt like I was very different, like an oddball.  He said it is just because of the boyscouts that it has played out in those families that camping is a dad and son thing.  Maybe in looking at me, people who do not really know me think I am prim and proper.  When Hubs and I first married, one of his brothers and his wife invited us to go to a very quiet, understated island in the Bahamas where you bring much of your own food, do your own cooking, etc., and they seemed to have to make it clear to me that it is not a place for blowdryers.  I realized he didn't know me well because I went with the more primitive flow even better than Hubs (and I use the blowdryer infrequently).

It has affected me a little bit these past couple days that I guess it sounded strange to these other women that we are having a very low cost, camping anniversary for our 25th.  But today I am over it, and excited about us continuing our long ago tradition of a road trip with new discoveries.

For other spins on the Road Trip, visit Gretchen.