Y'all Hush: Georgia: An Epic Adventure Comes To An End

Hey, y'all -

From Montgomery, Peg Peg and Tex drove us over to the Lake Blackshear Resort near Vienna, GA to meet up with the Lee side of the family. The rental cabin was such a strange experience I actually wrote a review of it on TripAdvisor. I always think one of the luxuries of being an older, retired person is you'd have the time to sit around and leave reviews on all your experiences. "The burger was dry!" "The waitress was too tall!" "The room was too yellow!" I can't wait to be in my 60s and share all my unsolicited opinions with the internet.

We met up with my cousin Heidi and her kids again, and enjoyed our time together, swimming at the lake.

We were all swimming at the public beach there one afternoon, when I saw what I thought was some kind of kelp (?) floating in the water near the kids. I went out to investigate, but when I picked it up, I discovered it was NOT local vegetation, but instead was a floating hairpiece. That's right, y'all: I picked up a weave... at least until my cousin Heidi started screaming at me to put it down and quit touching it. I had to laugh, because I could only imagine that some poor woman had gone water skiing and climbed back on the boat to discover she'd lost her hairdo.

Heidi and her husband Jason took us out on their boat. Hagen wanted to ride on the tube pulled by their motorboat, but only if it went "really fast and crazy." I swear that kid is a mystery. I wore my ab muscles out trying to hold myself up enough that I could keep a good grip on him in case he took off flying and floated to the shore like a lost weave in the wind.

We stayed with my Aunt Melanie and Uncle David, which worked out great because they are practiced grandparents who don't mind Legos on the floor and are happy to sit and watch a marathon of "Paw Patrol" on Nickelodeon.

We had a water balloon fight at Heidi's:

But I'm sure if you asked Laney what the highlight of the trip was for her, she'd say the trips out to Clay and Connie Mercer's place to ride her favorite horse, Tucker.

This brings me to a very important topic in re: south Georgia: Gnats. I know I complain about the state of Florida being ludicrously hot, and it is. But it's like the state of Georgia said "Hold my beer and watch THIS," because they matched Florida's heat and humidity and added swarms of gnats. It seems like the people who live there have come to accept walking around with hundreds of miniscule bugs flying into their eyes and ears the way people in Seattle don't notice when it's raining. But holy hell, y'all - I couldn't do it. Heidi's daughter Hope loaned me a hat with a net that they save for whiny tourists, but it didn't help.

Spot the local in this picture:

One final word on Mr. Clay Mercer: While your dad was deployed for that final stretch of 313 days, Clay promised me that he would e-mail me a joke every day. I didn't always understand them and they weren't all zingers, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that he showed up in my inbox every morning like clockwork, and was a daily reminder that someone out there knew I was still having a hard time and might need a pick-me-up. He never forgot me, and even though he was struggling with his own (I don't think he'd mind me telling you) cancer diagnosis, he never missed a day. Clay and I might disagree on a few things, like the performance of the last few presidents, or the current tax bill, or the need for gun control, or Hillary Clinton's ankles or the superiority of the Winter Olympics, but in the end those things didn't seem to matter every morning at 5am when I got up and saw that e-mail.

Thank you, sir.

Finally, after months of fun, it was time to head back to Montana. We left early for the Atlanta airport so we could stop in Macon at a trampoline park and I could tire your butts out before making you sit on a plane for the rest of the day. This was one of my better travel ideas.