We left Charlotte for Columbia around 10:45am.  We attempted to stop for breakfast at Chick-fil-A, but found that breakfast had stopped at 10:30am – so we split a nugget meal instead.

We arrived in Columbia at 1pm, and sat in the living room and talked for a while.  Then we ate a late lunch of BBQ sandwiches, corn casserole, strawberries, and chips.  After lunch we took the rental car and went down to the river walk. JT’s grandparents sat in the shade while we went for a short walk, and then we sat with them for a while. We saw lots of cardinals, a turtle, lots of fish, lots of people relaxing, and some people kayaking.

We drove past the Columbia state capital and through the University of South Carolina on the way back home.  Then we sat and watched the Alabama versus South Carolina baseball game.

Dinner consisted of meatloaf, green bean casserole, potatoes, pear salad, and rolls.  We headed to bed around 11pm after reading for a bit. It was nice to have a relaxing, slow paced day for a change.

We awoke at 9am, and had breakfast with Aunt Lois.  Aunt Lois headed home and Katie left for Augusta at 10:15am. Katie was happy to find that the Avis rental car had XM radio included – although the air conditioning failed to work when the car was driven faster than 70 mph.

Katie met her parents near the Augusta river walk at 11:30pm. After driving around Augusta for a while (past Augusta National, the church my parents got married in, the Augusta Greenjackets stadium, ect) we ended up eating lunch at a cafe on Broad street (near the river walk) called The Blue Moon cafe. It had juices, coffees, smoothies, salads, sandwiches, and such with locally grown ingredients and ecologically smart packaging. Pretty cool place.

We parted around 3:30pm.  Katie thought it was cool to just sit and chat with her parents.  Katie made it back to Columbia around 4:45pm.

Evelyn and Bob – some distant relatives of JT’s grandparents – came to visit for dinner.  They brought over some wine and liquor. They were entertaining and interesting to talk to.  Once they left around 10am, we sat and started looking through pictures from our Peru trip with JT’s grandparents.  Katie fell asleep after a while.

We awoke around 8am Monday morning, ate breakfast, and then packed before continuing to look through Peru pictures.  We spent too long on the pictures from early parts of our Peru trip and ended up leaving at 1:30pm even though our target departure time had been 1pm.

We drove 1.5 hours back to Charlotte, dropped off the rental car, and eventually boarded our late Southwest flight to Houston. We still ended up with a 3 hour layover before our flight to Austin departed 30 minutes late.  Once in Austin we caught the 11pm airport flier back to JT’s office.