PLEASE looks under the HOME tab for a continuation of this 2015 blog. I started it in the wrong place. Sorry for any confusion!
April 15, 2015. Exactly one year to the day from the start of our first serious Airstream adventure, we have hit the road again with Doris — this time celebrating her 98th dog birthday! She is moving a little more tentatively these days, but still frightfully keen on camping. Last year, we explored the national parks of Southern Utah (plus upper and lower routes there and back from Atlanta, for a total of about 5,000 miles). This year we have selected a very different experience; taking a grand loop eastward across the Georgia plains, drifting up the coastal regions of South and North Carolina, hovering for a few days in the heart of Virginia where I went to college in the distant past, and ekeing spirally back down the Blue Ridge Parkway in the mountains of VA and NC. These are areas Brad and I have traversed separately many times in our lives and that we want to see again from a new perspective and through the eyes of our aged dog.
We decided to leave a day earlier than planned, as it was raining in Atlanta and it seemed advisable to drop the tax return at the post office and just keep driving. That meant we had to hustle to get all the last-minute things done 24 hours sooner, like wash all the dishes and laundry, shop for groceries, wash the Airstream inside and out, pack all of our worldly belongings into the customized storage bins, stabilize the house, run down to West Point with my sister to have lunch with Daddy who will be 102 next month (he was missing when we got there; we found him down by the creek wrestling wisteria vines off wax myrtles and generally cleaning up the creek bank — he was a little startled, but delighted to see me when I sneaked up and tapped him on the shoulder). Last night we had a farewell dinner with our dear neighbor, Jennie, who is ultimately in charge.
We got out of town at about 10:30 this morning, and arrived at George L. Smith State Park in Twin City GA in early afternoon. The park is named after George L. Smith II, who went to high school in nearby Swainsboro and served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1959 until his untimely death in 1973. It is a small but lovely state park in the middle of nowhere, surrounding a 450-acre-ish black-water pond that no one would ever dream of jumping into (even if it weren’t strictly prohibited). The water is pitch black in color due to the tannic acid produced by the thousands of cypress trees growing out of the shallow water, eerily beautiful draped in Spanish moss and almost choking the lake from daylight.
When the rain subsided at about 6 pm, we took a damp but invigorating hike down to the Parrish Mill, a combination grist mill, saw mill, covered bridge and dam that was hand-constructed in 1880 and is still used today as a means of flood control in Emanuel County. The black water from the pond washes lazily into the turbine at the top of the dam and gushes out below in what looks like a colossal accident involving Guinness Stout — yellowish white foam spewing out from the bridge, bobbing crazily and collecting along the river bank for as far as you can see. Doris absolutely loved it, never having seen anything like that before. They don’t allow her in the Olde Blind Dog Irish Pub near our farm, so she is generally unfamiliar with Guinness. Even to our practiced eyes, it was a bit unexpected.
No TV tonight, as we are surrounded by trees (and probably other dark things that are between us and the three satellites that inform our DirectTV). Looks like dinner and a mean game of competitive Canasta.
Tales from Towed Haul 