The Concert Band Trip

It was the earliest of my travels - back in college when I was 20 years old, my college concert band did a band trip from Michigan to New York city, with stops along the way. We stayed with families from town to town until we got to NYC, where we stayed in a hotel and played our final concert in Town Hall.


This was the first time I had ever been in Pennsylvania and heard Pennsylvania Dutch accents. It was the first time I had seen an urban, mostly black high school (in New Jersey). And of course it was the first time I had been in New York, seen a porn movie house, or dealt with panhandlers on the street as I and another 20 year old wandered around Times Square.


This was probably my first taste of travel, and even though the majority of it was hard work (rehearsing and performing, sitting on a bus for hours every day), it was enlightening. I wish I remembered more about the trip, but it was quite a while ago.

South Carolina - the Low Country

Adding another state to my list with a visit to my nephew who currently lives and teaches in a small town in South Carolina.

I took a flight down on Friday from home to Savannah, Georgia, which was the closest airport to my nephew's home town of Hampton, SC. From the Savannah airport, I took a rental car (silver Mazda 6 - nice car!) to Hampton - partly highway and partly a 2-lane road through rural country, with an interesting juxtaposition of palm trees and more conventional-looking trees (they aren't maples, I knew that, but they look bushy rather than tall and thin). Many have long ropes of Spanish Moss on them.

After arrival, I called my nephew, C, and we had dinner at a local pizzaria and planned our activities for Saturday. One of the first things we had done was visit a local man-made lake to see if we could spot any alligators. C had rented a boat the week before and gone out to see if he could spot and photograph one. He saw three, but the single photo he got wasn't very good - three bumps protruding from the lake surface was all he got. I took a couple of shots of the lake, which had some nice lily pads on it, but we didn't see any sign of a gator.

On Saturday we went to Charleston. Our plan was to take the ferry to Fort Sumter and perhaps visit the Aquarium nearby. But on the ferry back from the Fort, we instead got to watch the Blue Angels perform their airshow over the harbor. This was an unplanned benefit and one we took full advantage of. But no photos - they were just too fast to capture in a still shot.

We had lunch after the performance and then headed home for the day.

On Sunday, we drove to Hilton Head Island to see the lighthouse and the beach, play some mini golf, and do a little shopping. The weather continued to be gorgeous - sunny and in the 80s - and it was a pleasant drive, until we got to Hilton Head and realized that there was a major golf tournament taking place there and found we could not get to the lighthouse after paying to get access to the area. Everyone was being herded into parking for the golf tournament, and it was with some difficulty that we finally got out of the stampede.

So we gave up on the lighthouse and went to play mini-golf instead. That was fun, although of course I lost again - 57 to 55. Tough course! I was wearing a Michigan State t-shirt and the guy who took our fee asked me if I knew our basketball coach, Tom Izzo. Then we discussed the team's chances to return to the Final Four in the NCAA tournament next year. Spartans rock!

All in all, a great vacation weekend in SC, and I added another state to my list.