One of our favorite things about volunteering in the national parks is the other volunteers we get to work with. I wrote previously about our colonial village. It was nice to have other people who helped with the living history. But it hasn’t been all work, work, work. We also took some time for volunteer fun on St. Simons Island.
We went with other volunteers to see several movies. “Gone with the Wind” on the big screen for Flashback Cinema! I enjoyed going to “The Greatest Showman” on a girl’s night out – none of the husbands wanted to go! And we watched “The Post” with Nell and Randy. We see (and enjoy) more movies on St. Simons Island than we do anywhere else.
We also had two game nights. Because none of the RVs are big enough for all ten volunteers, Rachel let us hang out in the seasonal ranger living room. Plenty of room for all of us! We played “Catch Phrase,” “Apples to Apples,” “Sequence,” and Rachel taught us “Shanghai Rummy.” Shanghai Rummy is a lot like Phase 10, only with two regular decks of cards. We also ate some good food and told some tall tales. Between the five couples we have 26 years of RV volunteering in the national parks, so plenty of tall tales to tell!
As part of the volunteer fun, we also went out to eat together two times. The first time we went to Certified Burgers, which was a favorite place for us last year. This year everything had too much salt, so it was the only time Tom and I ate there. The second time we ate at Frederica House. We wanted to go where to a place that none of us had tried before.
Frederica House is only open in the evenings and we went right when it opened at 5:30. The decor is the best thing about the restaurant. The white cedar used throughout the interior was milled long ago and then lay at the bottom of the salt marshes until it was rescued for Frederica House. Consequently it has lots of interesting patterns carved by the tide and by sea creatures. The food was good enough and the company was even better. We enjoyed our last dinner out together.
Tom and I never know when we will see these people who have become friends again. We say we will see them “down the road” and we hope that it is true. The volunteer fun we have together is one of the reasons we continue to enjoy our jobs as RV volunteers in the national parks.