Friday, November 16th, 2012:  Just got out of the hot tub - so I'm settling in for the evening and adding to my blog.  I rented a car for the weekend, just to make things easier - went to check out the church I had researched before I left Canada - Moodie Memorial First United Methodist.  It's crazy huge, with lots and lots of community activities taking place all the time!  When I dropped by, there was an arts and craft sale going on- inside and outside the building, and on two floors!  I've enclosed a few photos taken from the second floor!  Saw a number of quilting projects and thought of Judy - particularly these really cool microwave potholders with magnets sewn into them to hang them on the microwave. A bazaar item for the future?
The sanctuary is lovely - quite small for the size of the building, but two services take place simultaneously - one more "conservative" one with a regular choir in the sanctuary (which is about the size of GSJ's sanctuary) and one more "contemporary" with a "praise band" in another large room elsewhere in the maze of rooms and corridors in this building.  Guess which service I plan to attend?  [Hint - I'm not exactly crazy about praise bands . . .)
On the way to pick up my rental, the Enterprise guy (whose name is Jason) regaled me with historical and other stories about the island.  For example, the houses on stilts - the government has mandated that houses on this part of the island be built at least 20 feet off the ground - ever since hurricane Ike destroyed so much in 2008.  Apparently, a lot of houses were already off the ground and survived the hurricane, but lost the stairs leading up to their homes.  Years ago, I had seen online the impact of Ike on the lovely red oak trees for which the island was famous.  Something like 900 of them were destroyed!  What I didn't know was that those trees were not actually blown down - the flood waters were so high for such a long time that their roots basically drowned - so the trees had to be cut down.  I'm dying to see the sculptures that the residents made out of the stumps of those trees!  Maybe tomorrow . . .
I did stand in the Gulf of Mexico today - got the pics to prove it!

Moodie Memorial arts and craft sale  - notice the professional-looking scoreboards -  there's obviously money behind this church!

Again - from the second level - a balcony runs all around the hall.

The Gulf of Mexico (not sure of the purpose of the white fences - I'm sure I'll find out . . .

Pretty much the same shot 

Looking from the beach to a development of houses - apparently, real estate here is very cheap - but it's very hard to get insurance . . . 

This is  me, standing IN the Gulf of Mexico to take this shot!

More of the same

One can just park on the street and stroll over to the beach.  In fact, there are lots of places where one can actually drive one's car onto the beach - how cool is that?

I love this house!  Check out the size - and also the colour.

A couple of other houses - almost all houses are painted in various pastel colours - really cool!