New Years Start

January 1, 2012 marks a full year since I retired. The year was as varied as any I have experience up to this point in my life. I look back at the decision and I do not regret it at all, yet I still feel connected to the work I left, those issues related to the poor, family strengthening and work related to fatherhood. The upside relates to spending a lot of time with family, close and extended, and seeing some beautiful places and meeting hundreds of interesting people.

New Year's Eve started with a home-cooked dinner with some friend, Paul and Cynthia, who recently moved to Myrtle Beach. We ended it back at the RV park. I ventured out to witness the biggest bonfire I have ever seen and I also walked the Camanche Pier, the longest wood pier on the eastern seaboard, a quarter mile long.

The RV park sponsors the bonfire each year. They spend a full day before hauling large logs out onto the beach.

A view from the pier looking north

South of Myrtle Beach there is a wonderful garden, Brookgreen. Well worth the stop, full of sculptures. The garden is over 9100 acres and over a thousand sculptures!

Gold leaf sculpture

The Brookgreen Gardens also have a certified zoo featuring native animals of the region. We were quite impressed by the tree fox, owls and the walk through aviaries. Here is one of my favorite pictures of the hundreds I took in the Gardens
over the two days touring.

This particular fox that climbs trees has claws like cats

A beautiful swan ends our day at the Brookgreen Gardens