was clear one day and cloudy the next.

Some of my family was here over the weekend so we took the opportunity to climb the lighthouse on St. Simons. As often as we have been to the island, some of my family doesn’t remember having been there before. Shame, shame. I guess we have been so often we kind of assume our frequent guests/family have seen it. We certainly didn’t allow enough time to see much, Saturday being the first day of a long weekend and we were too busy relaxing to make plans very quickly.

The lighthouse is pretty much like any other you can climb. It has a spiral staircase that will leave you (some of us, anyway) feeling just a little funny by the time you get to the top. Then you step out into the sunshine and see life 100 feet behind you and you don’t feel any better for a few minutes. Interestingly enough, putting the camera to my eye and seeing only a small amount of the view brings things back in to focus (pun intended) and the swirling brain calms down.

The gentleman who came up a few minutes behind us had a harder time. He didn’t have a camera to block out the view and he had a death grip on the rails as he made his way around. He was a good sport and we got to chatting with him about it all. We offered to take his photo as proof that he made it. I told him about one of my friends who had fainted as we were about to descend on another excursion I had made to the lighthouse. He was sure his wife (who was waiting for him at the bottom) would have done so.

 

My mom who had been waving at us from below:

 

There are often weddings going on here and this day was not exception.

 

On Labor Day, my nephew who got his pilot’s license this past summer took us up for rides around the area. It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve been up over my home area. It is fun to see everything from this angle.

As you can tell, there was great delight and excitement at going up!

Goodness, we were just playing tag and kickball with all these kiddos not many years ago and here they are flying away into the sky!!

 

Finally it was my turn to go up, along with my mom. I love this next picture! Derrick was the only niece/nephew who grew up around here, and my mom would take him out on excursions when he was young. I believe she took him to Savannah so he could see the “hareplanes” as he called them, “yittle” ones and big ones. Of course, this was before 911 so they could go out to the concourses. I think they were able to board a plane so he could see what the inside looked like.

Now here he is a pilot.

 

Our house in hidden in the trees.

 

Getting out to the area where our church is.

For the locals, you can figure out the rest. 

 

The lake where I often go to take pictures. It’s amazingly swampy at this end. The other end has a fair amount of boaters on it when the water is high enough.

 

The business where I work:

And back again all in one day. Or less.

 

As we were waiting for the last ride to come back in, a big bird came in.

 

And the family from out-of-town returned to their homes and we had a quiet evening, thinking we should catch up on some sleep!  I love nice, long, holiday weekends, especially when family comes to visit!