Tom and I have been self-isolating at Fort Frederica since the middle of March. The Governor of Georgia didn’t issue a stay-at-home order in Georgia until April 3, but the Glynn County Commissioners closed everything here much earlier. Fort Frederica shut down programming at the same time Glynn County closed, and we closed the park completely on April 3. Since then, Tom and I have continued to work with the self-isolating “family” we have here at the park.
There are five of us in the family. Tom and me, Denise and Bob Verba – two other RV volunteers, and Angela, who is an Student Conservation Association intern. Verbas and Hartleys live in our RVs and Angela lives in seasonal housing. We included the other two volunteer couples in our family, but they have moved on. We were supposed to get two additional couples but they decided to delay coming until they see what effect re-opening Georgia will have on Coronavirus cases.
So the five of us continue to work closely to each other and stay away from everyone else. We are self-isolating together, which helps us all deal with it. None of us go out of the park compound except for essentials like groceries. Once a week we all order take-out which we eat together followed by some board games. We talk to each other every day and do lots of different work projects together. Angela likes to weave on her days off. Denise and Bob and Tom all work together on maintenance projects.
When we have our suppers and games together, we meet in Angela’s house. The seasonal housing has four bedrooms, but Angela is the only one there now. She cleans it thoroughly before we all come over. Of course, we all wash our hands before and after our meal and after playing our game. We remind each other not to touch our faces, although we are pretty good at that by now.
Self-isolating has not been a hardship on us. We have 200 acres of park for walks and we rarely see anyone aside from each other. We miss our families in other locations but are glad to have each other for companionship.