St. Simon's, Day Two, Part Three

We left the van parked at the pier and walked to the lighthouse and the keepers house. We had to pay a fee to get inside, but it was worth it, and will get us into The Maritime Museum tomorrow, too. Again, lots of photos, only a few here, blah, blah, blah...

The Keeper's house, and what he Kept.

The lighthouse is made of brick and has iron steps that spiral all the way up...and down again.

The narrow iron balcony. Despite being afraid of heights, I ventured out onto the balcony. The narrow, iron balcony. That's bolted to the bricks. Near the sea with its salty air. Salt corrodes iron...did you know that? I knew that. La, la, la, la, la... We were so high up, we were level with an aeroplane! That speck is the plane...

From the bottom, looking up - I climbed that??

Feet firmly back on the ground, we collected the van and drove 'round to Gascoigne Bluff. We were going to visit the maritime Museum, but it was close to closing time and we wanted to take our time.

Gascoigne bluff has a feature we were anxious to see - tabby slave houses leftover from the plantation era. These houses represent a time long gone, but never to be forgotten.

The ubiquitous iron plaque.

How many people lived in this tiny cabin? It's about the same size as my two-car (or one van and lots of junk) garage.

The circle and rectangle in the walls give one a look at the tabby material - otherwise, these cabins are plastered and whitewashed, giving them a smooth, clean look.

The local garden club holds sway, here, and it's lovely...at odds with the history, no?

A skinny doorway and tabby detail.

An African Daisy, not to be confused with a frikkin' daisy...

We were worn out after this stop, so it was back to our room for a rest, some reviving tea and cookies, and planning dinner. We quizzed the nice young man at the front desk, who helped us narrow down our choices to one - Catch 228. I have no idea why it's called that.

Catch 228 is much like a strip-mall hole-in-the-wall joint in one of the shopping villages near our Motel. Their primary style is seafood everything, but they do have burgers and chicken on offer. One may dine inside or out, and it's definitely casual. We chose indoors, but would have been better off outside - the interior is all hard surfaces, so voices carried and it was loud!

After ordering drinks (wine for Mum, nice, and rum and coke for me, just fine, and water for both, which was...wet), we gave the menu a good going over. It isn't a huge menu, but that's OK - it had a variety of fish and shellfish prepared a variety of ways, and that's what we wanted. After debating one thing and another, we ended up ordering an odd combination of three things - boiled shrimp (peel 'n' eat), low country boil, and crab legs, all to share. Mum was hungry.

While we waited for drinks (they took a while and our waiter ended up comping them because the bartender didn't poor them for quite a while) and our meal, we drew on the brown paper table cover. The paper is there to make clean-up a cinch, but they give patrons crayons for fun, and we love to doodle!

After about fifteen minutes, it got loud in there. I must admit to being particularly irritated with one family that had several children with them, two of whom were running about the place unsupervised. The little girl nearly tripped a waitress, and she and the boy were pounding on the fish tank and shrieking at high-pitched top volume for quite a while. I don't tolerate that kind of behavior well - rest assured, the Evil Genius does not get away with it ( I have removed him from a restaurant before and would do it again).

Our meal arrived in short order, and what a feast! The portions were generous and cooked beauifully, although Mum thought the crab was a wee over cooked and not salty enough. Their cocktail sauce had a wonderful kick to it, and I used plenty on the shrimp (I mostly ate that, partly because I wanted to and partly because I was afraid Mum would go after one of my fingers like a crab leg if I reached into the basket for one).

Replete with our dinner, we enquired about desert.

Guess what?

Catch 228 doesn't serve desert. It's a seafood place, and there aren't any key-lime-pie fish swimmin' around out there!

We didn't really need desert, per se, and could have driven to the local Dairy Queen, but we decided that enough was enough and trundled back to our room.

Total cost for a complete pig-out seafood feast? $41.70 before tip and with drinks comped.

A few totals: Hours of sleep last night - 7, excluding the few hours we spent drifting in a bacony haze this morning before we got up. Total hours spent walking around, over, up, down, and through - 6.5. Total steps taken - 6,282 plus or minus a few. Miles walked - 2.77, give or take a bit. Calories burned while walking about - 392, more or less. Times I squatted, hunkered, lay down, bent over, bent backwards, reached, stretched, and contorted to get a good shot - countless. Number of photographs taken on my camera - 508. Number on Mum's camera (including the awful one of me that she has sworn she'll delete before anyone but us has seen it) - 102. Twizzlers eaten to help boost flagging blood sugar - 12 at various times. Litres of water drunk - 3 (nowhere near enough). Number of public restrooms visited - two.

Now I'm off to bed (Mum's been asleep for hours) - tomorrow, we have a lot more walking to do, more photos to take and not post, and more restaurants to visit. Cheers!