Trip Teasers!

Hello to my wonderful, loyal blogging friends!  I’m baaaaaaaaack! ;)  
I missed every one of you and I also missed visiting your blogs!

We had a great time exploring and visiting friends and family in this beautiful country of ours.
I have some photos of our trip…..just some teasers so you’ll know the path we took.

Of course, many more will come later!  Let’s see….how many SD cards did I go through?  ;) 

From Michigan, south through the Great Smokey Mountain Park below.

Driving through the Great Smokey Mountains after heavy rain. Love the mist in the mountains.

From the Smokey’s, continuing south, we arrived in St Simons Island, GA., to stay with our college friend below.   St Simons is a barrier island off the coast of GA.  It is lovely with marshes, tons of azaleas, live oaks dripping with spanish moss and wide open beaches.

The charming St Simons lighthouse after sunset.

With our college friend, we made the 2 hour trip north to Savannah.  I love architecture and this was a treat, below.

This is one of the lovely homes we saw on our "trolley" ride around Savannah.

From St Simons Island, we drove north to one of our favorite cities, Charleston, SC.  The next day we drove to my elementary school friend’s home in Pawley’s Island, SC.    Pawley’s Island is beautiful, lush and the home of the original rope hammock, see below.

This rope swing is on top of our friends' marina building. It gives a great view of the surrounding land and the Waccamaw River. (it's also fun to swing in it!)

We continued north.  Can you tell we are doing the “coastal crawl”?? !!  We stopped at Cape Hatteras and Ocean City before arriving at my cousin’s home near Wilmington, Delaware.   Of course the DuPont families are important in Wilmington, and one of my favorites has always been the Winterthur estate.  Winterthur has gorgeous gardens along with the massive mansion.  This time my cousin introduced us to another DuPont estate called Longwood.   The gardens were just outstanding.  Both of these estates should be on a “must see” list if you go to Delaware.

One of my favorite looks: woodland phlox or phlox divaricata, snuggled up against a tree. This photo is from Longwood Gardens.

We turned left from Delaware and continued west into Pennsylvania.  We had tour tickets for Kentuck Knob and Fallingwater.  If you know me, you know I’m a Frank Lloyd Wright design freak!  So this was a treat.  We’ve been to several others, but Fallingwater has always been on my bucket list.  Below you will see the smaller home, Kentuck Knob, a delightful gem, just 7 miles from Fallingwater.  The chimes in the surrounding landscape are great sculptures and also provide sound when the wind blows.  

One of the chimes at Kentuck Knob, and the corner of the low, wide-overhanging roofline...typical of FLW homes.

Alas, every good vacation must come to an end.  At this time of year, it’s fun to see what changed in the gardens while we were gone.  (mostly weeds!)   Home again, home again, jiggedy jig……

Home.

Thank you for hanging in there while I was gone.  I hope to see you soon.  I’ll have photos to share on each stop we made.
I’m even thinking of a wild and wooly post called “PHOTOS at 70 mph”  as I took many riding down the highway!  haha.

Peace and hugs….
Judy
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