Fernandina and Friends
Finally, an Atlantic sunrise.
One of many excellent shared meals.
Our intrepid explorer heads to the beach!
Egan’s Creek Trail. Watch out for water moccasins, said Gary!
Just two buddies hanging out.
By Robin
Last week was a real treat. We spent the week in lovely Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island hanging out with some of our oldest and dearest friends, Eileen and Gary Myers. The Myers retired to a beautiful new home in Fernandina about a year ago, and they were wonderful about showing us around their adopted hometown.
Between cooking and sharing delicious home cooked meals together and going out to eat at some of Fernandina’s terrific restaurants, food was a centerpiece of our visit. Eileen is a dietician and we are endlessly fascinated with this subject, so food, recipes and nutrition were hot topics of conversation!
Another hot topic was Gary’s turkey chili. The dish went through a few trial runs where it was Very Spicy 🌶 until we all looked at the recipe closely and discovered it called for for TWO chilis in adobo sauce, not two CANS of chilis in adobo sauce. It turned out delicious after revision!
A real treat was Eileen organizing a dinner party that included one of my Mom’s old friends from her running days, Coach Roy Benson, and his wife Betty. Roy is renowned in the coaching/running world and worked with Mom on many projects at the Road Runners Club of America…and Mom was a counselor at Roy’s running camps. It was delightful to catch up with them, reminisce about Mom and talk about exercise science and healthy aging.
On another day Gary led us all on a 25-mile bike ride around the island, which included a breakfast stop and a stop at fantastic bike shop. Amelia Island is incredibly biker-friendly, with miles of bike lanes and paths. We saw group rides of varied paces going on all week long.
We couldn’t get into any campground within reach of F-Beach (as we’ve nicknamed it) so we rented a cat-friendly VRBO on the beach that had room to park our trailer on the side. There were advantages and disadvantages to this setup.
Disadvantages: moving all our key clothing and household equipment, food, litter box, etc out of the trailer and into the condo…then back again at the end of the week.
Advantage: more space to move around for a week. T’Chat especially enjoyed racing up and down the stairs and from room to room, investigating. We were also able to give the inside of the trailer a thorough cleaning, which was helpful after 4 months living in it.
Periodically on our travels we need to do ‘life maintenance’. The F-Beach stop also served this purpose. Got blood labs done, had mail and other items we needed forwarded to the Myers’, washed all the bedding, borrowed the Myers’ vacuum to clean our rugs, serviced and washed the pickup truck, used the fast condo wifi to catch up on banking and other online chores.
Thank you Eileen and Gary for all your help, and most importantly, for your love and friendship!
Judices, Myers, and Bensons