Out Again - Still Learning

I went out again, this time heading to southwest Georgia.  A longish but rather nice drive to begin the day, once again traveling though parts of the state I'd not been to before and seeing a good number of little, sleeping towns.  First stop was the Kolomoki Burial Mounds which was a very pretty park and historic site.  Wandered around a bit, found the state geocache and also the historical site geocache.  I like the historic site caches as they all involve searching for answers in order to get the combination to the lock on the cache box.  Finding this one completes another 'set' of sites in Georgia's historic site challenge, my third.  No pictures of this little walk... don't know why now that I think about it.

From there I moved further west and visited George T. Bagby park, my first state park that pretty much bordered the lower Chattahoochee River which is the border between GA and AL at this point.  Actually, due to a dam, the 'river' here is actually a reservoir which forms a rather large lake.  A nice park and a good walk.

 

Kind of an eerie walk.  I think my first through a forest where most all of the trees had spanish moss hanging from them.  Pretty evident that this area floods with some regularity.

Next up was a visit to Providence Canyon State Park.  This park does not have a cache but it's a place I wanted to see.  Much better pictures than I have can be seen at:  http://gastateparks.org/ProvidenceCanyon  Do take a look at this as it is quite an extraordinary locale.  I arrived at the park at about 4:00 PM and the gates locked at 6:00 PM so I didn't have a lot of time but I did enjoy myself.  I got down to the bottom elevation of the canyons and sort of followed signs from there, I thought.

Getting to the bottom I found the 'path' was a bit wet with flowing water.  Kind of expected, I guess, what with this area being carved out by erosion and all.  Wasn't very deep but there really was no option to walking around the water.

 

I kept following what I thought was a path or trail.  There were boot prints so it wasn't like I was exploring unknown territory.  But, it did get very narrow and very steep.  I shot these photos looking up the path and you can't tell how steep it was.  You also can't tell how narrow.  This path is pretty much a boot-width wide.  Figuring I was doing the 'right' thing, I just kept going up...

... and up...

... and up.  I made it up to what can be seen at the top of this photo and the 'path' just ended!  I was on the face of a vertical wall and nowhere to take another step.  I knew I had to get out of the park so looking at the time on my phone, which now showed the wrong hour, I noticed that I had no telephone service... no signal.  Oh, this is not good.  I take a dive off this place and they won't find me until they build a mall here.  I just went back down.  It probably would have been much easier if I had turned around and went down as though coming off a ladder.  Well, now I know, but I didn't then.  Facing forward it was a bit of an experience :)

 

Retracing my steps to get out of the canyons I came across this trail which I guess I missed.  This provided a bit easier access out.  Along the way there were MANY signs warning that it was illegal to climb the canyon walls.  Well, they should have had a sign right where I did it.

 

The last stop for the day was at Florence Marina State Park which is where I planned to camp for the night.  It was pushing 7:00 PM when I arrived and I knew the sun was going down but I really wanted to get to this one instead of waiting until morning.  I took off on what I thought was the right trail but when the GPS was showing I was within 400 feet of the cache I knew something was wrong as I was standing at the edge of the water, looking at a dock that extended maybe 50 feet.  Of course, about 400 feet away was a pennisula which I realized was where I was supposed to be... now.  Off again I go, determined to get to the cache.  It was worth the trip!

 

The walk out the penninsula was soooooooo pretty.  Going to these parks on week days has pretty much given me the parks to myself and this was no exception.  The sound of a small motorboat approaching actually made the total experience more enjoyable.  I let the boat pass but did shoot a couple of pictures.  This is the direction the boat came from...

... and this is the direction the boat was heading.

At the cache site.  It was so pretty and so dog-gone peaceful.

It was getting dark pretty quick so I walked rather quickly to where I left the van, drove maybe 1 minute to the camping area and got settled in.  It was a very, very good day.

As for my 3rd camping experience, I'm telling you, things just keep getting more luxurious as I learn to do this better.  Notice the plush improvements:  A foam seat pad AND a placemat!  As for my dinner, a step up there as well as I brought along a nice, fresh kaiser roll onto which I placed my perfectly cooked Bubba Burger.  Life is good... life is good :)

 



 

 

 

Heritage Days

With my new-found enjoyment of things to do within GA I've been looking at some web sites that list activities and what not and recently came across an announcement that the annual Heritage Days activities were this weekend in the little town of Fayetteville, GA... maybe 40 miles south of me or so.  Yesterday it rained all day but this morning the forecast was for beautiful weather and it was.  So, I ventured down to this place called Minters Farm to see what this was all about.  I'm glad I did.

Basically I guess I would liken this to something like a farm-related exhibit and home-grown/made foods.  Blacksmiths working, brooms being made, corn being shucked on old machines, all kinds of old machines and trades being demonstrated.  The area covered was pretty big and I had a good time wandering around looking at this and that for about 3 hours.  Oh yeah... no admission charge but they did ask you to buy a program for all of $2.00. 

Lots of antique tractors and other farm equipment.  There were a couple of steam tractors but they weren't running... darn.

I liked walking down this area.  Hard to see but that blue canopy place had a white sign that said 'Beef Jerky' and that's where I headed.  I bought a few pieces, tried it, and then bought a lot more pieces.  This stuff is good!  I spent a little time talking to the man and woman at this booth -- if that's what it's called -- and they were very free and open about just how they do it.  Evidently the woman is the one who really does it.  Other than making the house smell rather 'sweet' for a few days afterwards, nothing to it she said.  We'll see :)

 

This was soooo cool!  This is a belt-driven rough saw mill.  I have never seen a tree cut into boards and was quite fascinated with this.  There were maybe six fellas working it.  The person calling out instructions and actually controling the feeder and blade appeared to be perhaps 107 years old and has probably been doing this for 102 of those years.  The blade on this thing had to be 4 feet in diameter and nowhere on this maching could I see any kind of safety feature!!  My kind of machine!! I got here as they were pretty much finishing with a tree but then they just started on another.  To me, these logs were big.  You can sort of see them on the left.  Maybe 18-24 inches in diameter.  Just watching five of them roll the next log up the log ramp to the thing that holds it for cutting was rather fun to watch.  Those suckers have to be heavy.

I've never seen a drive belt as long as this one.  The main belt continues perhaps another 50 feet, at least, to the lower left in the picture where it's connected to what appeared to be a 100 year old tractor that was driving it.  The shorter belt is driving a planer.  They cut the board, a guy takes it and runs it through the planer, and...

... then it's over to the stack pile.  I'd say it took about 20 minutes to completely cut up a tree into various types of pieces.  I just watched, facinated, for about an hour :)  While I was there a truck came in carrying more logs so I guess they're going to be at it for the afternoon.

As I was leaving I walked around the other side of the mill and saw this pile of sawdust.  This too was so cool.  You can sort of see the chain running around the pully in the upper right.  This thing runs (I guess) to somewhere under the blade and drags the sawdust away from the mill.  So simple but it obviously works like a charm.

 

Lots of food stands and I had some very good barbeque in addition to the wonderful jerky that I was chewing on the whole time.  Actually went back and bought more :)  I'm kind of walking on my way to leave and I see this stand.  I went over to chat with the folks because I didn't know what a fried oreo is.  Turns out it's just what it says... an oreo cookie, fried.  The nice lady told me "You know, there ain't nothin' that you can't fry."  She asked me if I wanted a sample and handed me one.  Sure enough, an oreo cookie surrounded by some kind of batter/dough, fried, and covered in powder sugar.  Three weeks of exercise wiped out by one cookie.  But, it was rather tasty.  The texture was a bit like an orea dunked in milk but this one was just battered and dunked in lard for a while :)

 



That's it.  Had a nice drive home though some little towns I never saw before the drive down, got out the hose to spray the mud off my tires and lower part of the van (yesterday's day-long rain had turned the ruts in the field where they parked cars into pretty deep mush for the most part) and made a note in my calendar for this time next year.  A good day out!

 

Eastern-Central GA

I got out for another overnight trip visiting some more state parks and working on my Georgia geocaching challenge this week and once again had a wonderful time of it.  While not the rugged, mountainous terrain of northeast Georgia, the areas I visited had their own beauty and interests and I did see an awful lot of beautiful scenery.  At one of the parks I even saw my first alligator in the wild in Georgia; saw plenty while living in Florida some years back.  I think the gators here are far more ferocious what with living in the swamps and things but since I was probably 300 feet away from this one, maybe more, it was hard to tell :) 

I didn't take that many pictures this trip but couldn't pass up not taking a picture of this covered bridge and mill dam.  Placard says this is the longest in-use covered bridge in the country... eat your hearts out New Englanders!  The water coming over the dam made that lovely, loud sound.

The path headed toward the cache at this park stayed pretty much along side the river and the river was flowing quite quickly with plenty of little white-water sections to keep the sounds up.  Really, really nice.

It was hot and this was a pretty good trek.  When I got back to the van I decided to slip out of my hiking clothers and put on a pair of shorts and I headed back to this area to wade around a little bit.  The water was deliciously cool and had I not had a itinerary planned out I could have just sat in one of these pools for hours.

 

Camping:  I learned a lot my last trip out with the van and things went really well this time.  I did make a couple notes for next time but nothing worth shouting about.  Biggest improvement... dinner!

 

 

No hotdogs this time.  This time it was a perfectly cooked and very delicious Bubba Burger with a side of potato sticks instead of those yucky Pringles and, thanks to a suggestion by my friend Darcy, a delicious apple for dessert.  Nice... really nice.  After dinner I met the most delightful older couple who I enjoyed visiting with and hearing of their adventures as they are now working on their third visit-every-state adventure!  Holy smokes!



 

Andersonville.  Not a state park and no geocache on the property but it's a place I wanted to see.  Earlier in the day, my second day, I had visited the state park at Magnolia Springs which has on its grounds the remains of Fort Lawton, another confederate prison camp built to accommodate the overflow from Andersonville.  During the last couple of years college students from Georgia Southern have been doing extensive archeological digs here.  Anyway, I wanted to see Andersonville, a National Park and Cemetary built around what once was Andersonville prison camp.  Also on the grounds is the national POW museum.  Regretfully the museum closes at 4:30 PM and I arrived later than that.  Regardless, I'm glad I made the visit.

 

The POW cemetary part of the national cemetary.  No way my camera could capture the many thousand tightly-spaced headstones.  It was an awesome sight.

Row after row after row of POW headstones.  While here I learned that they are so close together because the POWs were buried in mass graves, shoulder to shoulder.  Hence, the proximity of the headstones to one another.

Every POW headstone is numbered and all but a few identify the individual.  This identity and numbering system was done by a prisoner who kept a journal that was found after the camp was abandoned.  The headstones were placed many years after.

 

BUGS!  STINKIN' LOVE BUGS!!  I thought love bugs were restricted to Florida and further restricted to certain secions of the interstate system.  I certainly had my full of them when living in Florida and would have considered my life pretty darn complete if I never saw, or ran into, another one again.  Then again, you never run into one of them... always two!  Anyway, during my second day out while traveling from one park to the next I get hit by some bugs.  First thought, based on the color and splatter pattern... love bugs.  Impossible, thought I.  More and more and then I knew for sure. 

 

After the first hits.  These things really stink, too.

Hard to see here but in a short while my windshield was pretty well covered.  The meetings with these disgusting creatures continued throughout most of the day and the coverage was pretty complete.  Driving home, mainly west/northwest, as the sun started going down it became harder and harder to see out of the windshield.  Only one way to get some relief...

... all better, for a while :)  Those who have had the misfortune of getting their vehicle plastered by these suckers know that they are NOT easy to get off.  Blasting with the high-pressure did all right and I certainly could see better driving into the setting sun but the real scrubbing happened the day after I got back. 

 

A wonderful trip.  680 miles in parts of the state I've never been to and 7 official geocaches found.  I will indeed be doing this again :)





 

NC Trip - Part 2

After a wonderful 2 days of geocaching in the state parks up in northeastern Georgia I headed over to see the family in NC.  The drive over was just awful for no particular reason other than it was awful but the rewards of getting over there were plentiful.  The meals that Samantha and David cook up are always wonderful and this trip was no exception starting off with a first-class lobster/crab/shrimp boil as good as any restaurant can do.  While working on a crab leg I managed to slice my thumb rather well... still can't figure that one out... but it was worth it.  And of course there was wonderful conversation and wonderful times spent with my two granddaughters.  (You can make the pictures bigger by clicking on them)

It was hot... REALLY hot during this stay and on Friday while David was at work Samantha got the slip-n-slide out for the girls to cool off on.  Of course they had a ball.  My happiness was complete by just watching them enjoy themselves.

It should be noted that Riley continues to increase her adverturous spirit.  This girl will drink from anywhere and I mean anywhere!  This water is coming straight out of the hose and certainly isn't bad.  The other places from which she quenched her throat were not so healthy, but they were funny :)

Hannah continues to be the most incredibly loving big sister and here she models her new bikini that she was very proud of.

Papa's girls... and Papa.  That is not a mole on Riley's chin.  Love those pigtails :)

 

On Saturday David got us all into their new van and took us out to a zoo.  He had mentioned wanting to make this trip prior to my heading over there and I did look at the web site.  I do have to admit that from the web site it looked pretty rinky-dink.  Afterall, I have been to some of the 'best' zoos in the world... Brookfield, San Diego, Miami-Dade, and others and some animal shelter zoo place in Cameron, NC of all places had me expecting perhaps a bit of fun for the little ones but that was about all.  Well, oh ye of little faith... let me tell you!  This trip to the Aloha Safari Zoo turned out to be the best zoo experience I have ever had.  This place was incredible.  It was kind of like the zoo trips I had as a youngster... before all the rules and animal-protection crap came along.  I mean you could REALLY interact with the animals here and boy oh boy, did the girls interact!  Some pictures follow but it doesn't capture the essense of the place... simple, pretty, family-orientated, lots of different animals, a "safari ride" right through a lot of animals, bread given to the patrons to toss to the animals, and more I'm surely forgetting.

 

We got there shortly after the park opened, parked, and had arrived at the goat area.  Here the 3 blondes are near the goat enclosure when something gets their attention.  The staff had started bringing out animals and the first one just happened to be a rather large white python.  Of course Miss Fearless went right for it.

 

After petting the snake attention turned back to the goats.  The girls got quite a kick out of being able to pet them and such and it was such fun to just stand back and watch them do it.

We had gotten on to the safari ride and afterwards David took Hannah over to feed the giraffe.  They were both pretty good at it and, again, it was just so darn fun to see everyone having so much fun.

There were countless highlights of this day but perhaps this session stands apart just a bit.  Samantha had packed lunch for everyone and we were enjoying ourselves in the lovely picnic area when out comes a staff member with a big snake... I mean BIG snake.  15 foot, 150 pound python.  He just put the thing on the ground and let it crawl around!  What 'top' zoo does that?!?!?  For a brief moment it looked like Riley would hop right on for a ride but she settled on just touching it... and touching it... and touching it.  Hannah joined in and yes, I finally kind of touched it as well, but only once.

 

Samantha got this shot... one showing this snake from head to tail.  It's a big snake.

 

The picnic area was pretty much back where we had started and that was close to the goat enclosure.  During the morning David had gotten a bag of animal food -- popcorn and bread -- that the girls had fed just about every animal with through the visit.  This time was pretty neat as the adults just let the girls wander where they wanted to.  Not out of sight but off on their own.  What's left of the bag of food is laying there on the ground.  Riley of course being Riley made it a habit of giving some to the animals and then having some for herself as well.  I don't know how many times Samantha and/or David said "Yucky, Riley... no" but it didn't matter to Riley... off the ground or not :)

 

We spent about 3 1/2 hours here I think it was and every minute was great.  There was so much done and seen that I haven't mentioned here.  Shoot... it took all the resolve Samantha and David could muster not to buy a little baby pot-bellied pig that was being sold!  It was soooooo cute :)  Then there was me watching David watching the tiger that was making moves to line up a jump at Riley.  That was kind of freaky actually.  Regretfully all fun things end and so did our outing at the zoo.  I still got to spend another couple days with them before heading back home and those times too will go in the collection of life memories.  This trip happened over the Labor Day weekend which meant that I got an extra day with David not at work.  Four full days and five nights made for a great, great visit and I'm already missing them all.  Road trip in the making :)

 

 



NC Trip - Part 1

Something that I have been wanting to do was to get out and start traveling more around Georgia and around the country.  Being the tightwad that I am I just hate spending upwards of $100 a night just to sleep.  To remedy that situation I decided to go ahead and get a minivan and kind of outfit it to serve as my sleeping quarters when I get on the road.  Last week I headed out on my first trip, kind of a two-part deal.  First I wanted to get to some more of Georgia's state parks to see the sights and find the geocaches.  Second, I figured I could head out from far northeastern Georgia (where the parks were)  and get over to see the kids in NC.  So, that's what I did.  This post includes my geocaching adventures.

I had already been to one state park and this is where I began my second adventure of the day.  Too bad it was 'smoky' or whatever as this was one heck of a view.  I'm parked outside the ranger station which is my first stop at all the parks I visit.  From here I actually drove back down the mountain a bit to the trailhead that would take me to the cache.

 

Somewhere along the hike up the mountain.  This was not an easy walk!  There were a few very nice places to take a breather and this was one of them.

Same place but this time a view uncluttered by a human.

At one point the trail came close to a road and I saw this sign.  I didn't know there was an "Eastern" continental divide.  I thought there was just one continental divide.  Learn something new every day.

At the summit and not far from the cache location.  This is the first time I took a picture of myself using this nifty little tripod I got.  I fastened it to a tree and voila!  I may be hard to see what with the camouflage shirt and all.

Same location but I wanted to make sure you noticed the elevation. 

 

At the next park... Tallulah Gorge... and this beautiful scene made even better by the noise made by the rushing water.  This was really something.

Just another view as I meandered along the rim.

I noticed this bridge down near the bottom and continued walking to see how to get down to it.  I did zoom in on this shot so the bridge looks much closer than it was.

Found the steps down to the bridge and the water... and numerous warning signs.

Being the good person that I am and not wanting to cause the rangers any troubles I chose to bypass the 620 steps to the bridge and 1062 steps to the base of the next falls.  I'm sure there are some really great postcard shots of it.  Besides, the GPS was NOT pointing in this direction to the cache... happily!

I did get to see this rather neat, and noisy site a bit further on.  It's a dam that was built to control the waters flowing through the gorge.  This sucker was quite tall and the sound of the water coming from it was really something.

The next stop was the park that I was going to spend the night at.  My first stay at a state park campground and my first adventure in the van.  I was very satisfied on both counts.  I had plenty of room in the van and was quite comfortable.  Curtains... a reading light... fan... cooler... what more could I ask for?  Nothing :)

Midway through my first campout supper.  I decided to keep it really simple and just grilled a couple of hotdogs on the little George Foreman.  Worked darn well.  The Pringles were awful and I will work on that for next time.  I learned a few things, which I expected, that will make my next outing even better than this one.  Looking forward to it already!

Next morning I closed up shop and headed to the cache at the park I stayed at.  I knew ahead of time that driving through this little creek crossing was necessary to get to the cache but coming up on it early in the morning was kind of a surprise anyway.  I thought this was so cool.  Water was about axle depth but it was moving right along.  Fun :)

And the last cache of the first part of this trip.  Six parks... six caches found... wonderful sites seen.  This makes 24 state parks visited and state caches found.  My goal is to get to at least 6 more this calendar year.  Piece of cake :)