In 1952, the year of my birth, the Charleston Post and Courier declared that "Given enough of it, the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of grits is a man of peace." Yes we're in grits country, the Southern United States where grits are provided with every meal! Breakfast this morning we were offered French toast and bacon casserole (more like bread pudding with bacon, and American bacon unfortunately is not like ours) plus grits. Breakfast in hotels, if they provide anything you're lucky, usually consists of coffee and muffins, but in B&B's you chance your luck. At the last B&B we had, on consecutive mornings, waffles and then spinach omelette, we were also offered grits but I suggested that oats would be good - we ended up with steel cut oats which were great, but I suspected that they'd made too much as we got it the next day as well. We were not tempted to try the Shrimp and Grits Etouffe at the restaurant on our doorstep last night (the $50 a head also put us off!) So I had to try the grits this morning and am happy to report that a man full of grits is a man of peace because he can't do much else other than sit and slowly digest these grits (Vicky was not at all enthusiastic, "they look like miniature frogspawn" she said). 
Other Southern specialties include biscuit - which is really a scone. We were keen for some lunch as we sped down the interstate and might have gone for a Burger King but it was on the wrong side of the highway - on our side was a branch of Bojangles, - just like a McDonald's * with a drive-in at the back but their menu was biscuit and sausage - beats a big Mac anytime!
And aren't we the Parkrun tourists? After hitting a number of Parkruns in Australia we found one in the US. They haven't really taken off yet over here and there were only twelve of us - still that meant I got a good placing with third overall. It was a bit international as the runner in first was from Belfast, I was a Welsh third, fourth was a fellow from between Glasgow and Edinburgh and the organiser was from Beverley in Yorkshire - he had a very nice American missus though who pointed out to me a Great Blue Heron in the creek by the side of the course. It was a bit sharp at that time of the morning - well below freezing, but as you can see Vicky wasn't taking any chances with her thermal running outfit.
* Glad to see McDonald's still has an apostrophe in it!
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