The Best Western on US 1 in St. Augustine turned out to be okay. Until we checked in the night before, I hadn’t really realized that it was one of those motels where the rooms opened to the outside, rather than to an interior hallway. I have long avoided those, but the room here was large, clean, modern, and so forth.

It reminded me of my mother, traveling in the 1950s. She was always someone who had certain standards and who made sure she maintained them. One of her inviolable standards was that she would never stay at a motel that did not have a swimming pool. It simply was not a safe thing to do. You could not trust its management.

Now, of course, my mother never used the swimming pool. That, too, would have violated some standard. But in fact, I don’t think my mother could swim. Here is the story as I heard it:

My mother graduated from Washington University in 1936, after six years where she earned both a bachelor’s and a law degree. One of the inviolable rules of Washington University in 1936 was that, to graduate, you had to pass a swimming test. My mother refused to take the test. I assume she never entered the pool. My future-lawyer mother won her first case, arguing that the swimming test rule simply didn’t apply to her.

The day yesterday started off with loud thunder and blinding rain, our first of the trip. We did, however, drive through the oldest continually occupied city in the United States.

Let’s put it this way. St. Augustine was founded in 1565, and was the capital or major city of Spanish Florida for more than 250 years before the United States took control in 1822.

The oldest part of the oldest city is relatively small, but very picturesque. This is how it looks in the rain.

The drive from St. Augustine to Charleston was not very noteworthy, except to say that the traffic was heavy and that the cars seemed to be outnumbered by the trucks and RVs.

We stopped at Georgia Peach World, where they sell peach everything (and probably real peaches in season). They have peach jams, peach cookies, peach oils, peach salsas, peach pies, peach salad dressings, peach butters, peach brittle, peach relishes, jars of half peaches, quarter peaches and peach slices, and peanuts. We bought one of everything they had.

Close to Peach World is Angie’s Diner.

If you want to go to a place that was last remodeled in 1952, and where the clientele has not changed since then, this is for you.  Edie had a sandwich and fries (the fries thrown in compliments of our waitress), but I attacked the $7.99 buffet: fried chicken, fried okra, collards, mac and cheese, potatoes and cheese and more. I skipped the jello and puddings because we had peach cobbler cookies waiting in the car.

A very nice evening with our friends, the Goldmans, the conversation centered on the many ways civilization and humanity itself will probably be destroyed before summer. I now have a list: Leonard Cohen has nothing on us. Excellent dinner at one of their favorite Frenchish restaurants. The hostess recently had a baby, our server was very personable and attentive to detail (“Do you want your Ketel One with a few rocks or a lot of rocks? Do you want plain olives or olives with blue cheese?”), and she was accompanied by a waiter who was on the first night of his one week training. He did just fine.

Today, we continue. Tomorrow,  we finish.