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 :)