We found gas and filled up the next morning. We also finished a number of house repairs for our friend who was kind enough to let us stay with her. I made some great progress on my knitting project, as well. All in all, we felt that we accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.
We decided to spend time with another friend in the outskirts of Atlanta. This was a friend that my husband worked with at Apple earlier in his career. It was wonderful to sit down, and share stories over dinner. Best of all, I finally got a chance to taste some sweet tea. This is truly a southern treat that I hadn't tasted before this. It is refreshing to have during the summer heat.
We couldn’t leave Atlanta without visiting the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. The center has the crypts of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King. It includes a small museum containing a few articles that were owned by Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife along with those from Mahatma Gandi. King admired Gandi and visited India while he was alive. Notably, the Nobel Peace Prize that King received in 1964 was on display. Walking through the archway pathway that is behind the crypts, allows you to reflect on how much more we all have to do to make MLK’s dream a reality.
In our quest to reach the Atlantic, we decided to go further south to check out Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Hilton Head is a favorite resort town containing many expensive homes scattered on the island. We had to cross a bridge which made me feel as if we were entering a different country. The foliage featured palm trees and other thriving tropical plants. It was also more humid than Atlanta. Thankfully, there were cooler temperatures. I didn’t mind this combination after the searing 90s of the previous days.
This part of South Carolina is known as the Lowcountry. The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina’s coast. It is also home to the Gullah people. They are the descendants of enslaved Africans who lived here. We didn’t see any of them. I believe that they mostly live on a subset of the Hilton Head Island. I also noticed, to my chagrin, that there were a lot of places with the “Plantation” moniker on them. I can only guess that there were a good number of plantations here on the island at some point--I know there were many of them in the state. I know that I could never live on a plantation. The mere thought of the amount of suffering and pain that took place on those pieces of land would be overwhelming for me to process.
I was very excited to finally be reaching one of the endpoints of this trip: the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing it means that we have successfully crossed this country in one direction. We will complete the trip by returning back to California. So, everything from here on out leads us back home.
As soon as we got settled in, we walked to the beach to take a closer look at the Atlantic Ocean. We just missed the sunset--the sky was still very beautiful, though. I dipped my feet into the sea. The water was warm and the sand was finely packed. It felt like a funky moist sauna out there.
You'd think that water is the same everywhere in the world--nope. The Atlantic Ocean is so warm.
The arches at the King Center for Social Justice. Off to the far right are the crypts floating in the water.
Anointing my car with water from the Atlantic Ocean.