23/May/2015, Day 143. Saturday.
A Callaway Gardens Advcnture
Today was the day we had planned to go to Callaway Gardens. Although we were all up early, packed, and ready, we almost cancelled our trip. The reason behind the near cancellation was Old Grump.
Right after breakfast, a great brouhaha arose because he happened to look out the kitchen window, and notice that Lola had pulled out all the passion fruit vines he had been trying to grow for the past two years. Grump was extremely upset and angry!
Now before you get too mad at Lola, understand that ever since Grump lost interest in growing "food for the STUPD DEER", Lola has been doing 90% of the garden maintenance. She thought his passion fruit vines were weeds, and pulled them out.
So Grump was in a pissy mood all morning, despite which, (or maybe because of!), we decided to go to Callaway Gardens anyway.
It's about a two hour drive from where we live, but mostly lightly traveled back roads. (Grump is getting tired of interstate driving.) Once there we decided to purchase a season pass, which will let in a car full of folks for free. In addition to our half-off admission for the day, this set us back $175.00, which went straight to the debt-laden American Express card.
Callaway Gardens is a wonderful destination for walking. We walked from the Discovery Center to the Butterfly Center, then doubled back to go to the Horticultural Center, and walked back to our car via the path that goes past the Memorial Chapel. Lots of walking, but it was mostly under trees and along well maintained paths, most of which were paved. We probably walked 3 - 5 miles, but I would guess we barely covered a tenth of the availabe trails!
But there's more to Callaway Gardens than walking paths. The food is also terrific! We had a nice light lunch at the cafe near the Discovery Center, then later in the early evening after all our walking was done, we had a superb dinner at the Garden Restaurant. Grump had a yummy salmon dish, (wrapped in a pastry shell!), and Sweetie had the best prime rib we're ever tasted. Even Lola's pork chop was delicious, although Lola, who happily munches on fish heads and miscellaneous internal animal organs back home in the Philippines, didn't like it. (Go figure!) So Grump will have a wonderful lunch one day at work of her pork chop made into a bihon dish.
Now the Garden Restaurant was truly fine dining, and as such wasn't cheap; we pounded our beleaguered American Express card with nearly $150.00 for this dinner. After this luxury, our extravagances in Savannah last weekend, and, most disturbingly, our repeated costs to "repair" Sweetie's car, the balance on the American Express card has soared to over $6,000.00. Now we did make a payment of $4,000.00 recently, (from the money we put in the Robins FCU account), but even so, this will leave us will a balance over $2,000.00. Yuck!
But what are we to do? It's BORING sitting here at home, and the kids, (especially Kuya), get restless.
Painfully aware of our money troubles, Grump stayed up too late again, (which is why this entry is late), putzing around with Clickworker/UHRS in a desperate attempt to earn a few more dollars. Any suggestions on how we could earn some more money to pay for our "necessities"?
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