Sunday, December 30, 2012

We are in the last days of our tenure at Santee NWR. We worked our last shift yesterday with record-breaking crowds. It helps when the facility was being used by the local National Wildlife Federation Chapter, and the rules for recording visitors is that if someone leaves and comes back we count them again. They took a lunch break and a field trip, and after both they returned to the center. Triple counting helps bump up the numbers.

Today we are starting the process to pack things up and getting ready to move. The plan is to move tomorrow to a commercial campground less than 5 miles away. We are making room for our replacements who we think will arrive sometime tomorrow. The last we talked to them they were stuck in a snowbank in Allentown, PA. They live in Maine and were so anxious to get out and come south they left during the snowstorm that has been pummeling the East Coast.

We will be leaving the Santee area on Thursday, January 3 and will arrive at Savannah NWR that same day and expect to show up for work on Friday, January 4. From December 31 until Jan 3, we will have the chance to say hello to our replacements and start the farewell process with both sets of volunteers and with the staff at Santee. We plan to have a potluck gathering of the volunteers on New Years Day at which time we have offered to make pasties.

We have enjoyed some visitors recently. My niece, April, and her boys visited us and had venison stew with us on the Sunday right before Christmas. And then Lillian, a former colleague at work and fellow retiree, along with her bother and sister-in-law stopped by on their way from Charleston to Fort Bragg, NC on the day after Christmas. It's always fun to be the host for a change rather than doing all the visiting.

I will try to leave you with some photos and sign off until Savannah.

 
(clockwise) April, Shannon, Alan, Angus, and Ian at Cypress Gardens in SC.
 
 
Drayton Hall Plantation - One of the few plantation houses that had survived the Civil War
 
 
Christmas dinner with Alice and Al (volunteer couple from Ohio)
 
 
And we say goodbye to Santee NWR and Lake Marion
 

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