Road Trip

Ain’t No Miata

But it ain’t half bad. After a brief visit with my sister and her husband in Hendersonville (where the temperature was 48°) and eating at our favorite pizza place, West One, we headed west to do a little research for our fall Gap Trip with the Miata Club. When we got to Robbinsville it was 30 degrees warmer than H-ville. After reconnoitering a couple restaurants, eating dinner in one, and a couple of motels, we decided to take an evening drive in the mountains.

The Sonata handles pretty well for a big front wheel drive car, the 45 series tires help, but being an automatic transmission it isn’t nearly as responsive as the Miata in the twisties. We didn’t attempt Deal’s Gap proper, but did run up 129 to the Tail of the Dragon Store, head back south on 28 past Fontana Dam and then cut across 143 back into town. The Sonata has a slap stick shift lever that you can use to manually shift the 5 speed transmission, but its placement is too awkward for good functionality. But the SE version we bought has paddle shifters on the steering wheel, so I thought I would try using them on 129 when the road turns sharply uphill at the Fugitive Dam. It lasted maybe all of 3 minutes. Donna told me she wasn’t so distracted by my activation of the turn signals when down shifting, so much as the wipers swooshing by on the dry windshield when I hit the stalk instead of the paddle when attempting to shift up a gear. I think I’m going to need more practice at that…

Don’t be alarmed at the lack of atop count, I’ve decided to not add it to the bottom of the post when the Miata hasn’t been driven on that day.

CREEK XING


You found [Traditional Cache] Victoria Bryant State Park
The water didn’t seem too high as the Miata made it through fine with just a touch of belt squeal post creek crossing. This is our favorite park so far out of the 17 we’ve visited. We took a heart shaped BB game and left a Gingerbread Man watch. Dropped Mickey Mouse TB. TFTH


You found [Traditional Cache] Froggy
Our GPSr led us right to a likely spot. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We read the clue, well, this spot certainly fits the description. Oh, wait, the clue applies reasonably well to the other side of the trail too. Bingo! There it was. Took nothing and left 3 frog shaped erasers. Found as part of the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (GCZ8XQ)


You found [Multi-cache] The King of Bridges!
We found this in spite of ourselves. First off, read the whole page through and secondly pay attention to what you read. I thought we needed ABCD to fill in the coords for the final so we figured with the clue included in the last paragraph we could wing it without having one of the digits. Sure enough we located the final stage only to be greeted with a combination lock! Huh? Re-read the cache description page and discovered that ABCD is for the lock and the final coords are right there on the cache page. Well we have three of the numbers, we’ll just try those and ten tugs on the hasp with the ten numbers on that last dial. Didn’t work. So we walked back to read the missing number off the green sign for B that we didn’t get on our first try. Turned around and walked back to the cache again. Entered our four numbers and it didn’t unlock. Now we are questioning our counting of reflectors on the bridge. My wife then read the questions out loud to me and when she got to D I had to do a Homer Simpson forehead slapping, “DOH!” That was the ticket. We took nothing and left a Matchbox car and a couple of pencils.


You found [Traditional Cache] Shaking Rock
We almost didn’t stop as we were tired from a long day of caching and still had many miles to get home, but boy are we glad we did. What a neat place. Left a book and took a Travel Bug. Thanks. Found as part of the Georgia County Challenge (GC1B074)

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 968

119,000 Drops of Water

The Emperor passed the 119,000 mile milestone just outside Thompson, GA this afternoon on his way home from a geocaching adventure in northeast Georgia. We marked off three State Parks, three Counties and two DeLorme pages in two days on one tank of gas.

RE: The picture above, “What were you thinking? Where are you driving to?”

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 967

Wednesday

$3.29 a gallon gas
226 miles
9 geocaches found
4 Georgia counties
3 GA State Parks
2 GA Delorme pages
1 tick bite

I was wrong about people mailing Christmas cards from Santa Claus, Georgia, it can’t be done, there is no Post Office. I think people mailed it to City Hall where they used a special postmark, then carried the cards up to Lyons for actual mailing. The city hall building was locked up at 2:00 o’clock on a Wednesday, so we couldn’t get a definitive answer on how it worked.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 919

Santa Claus, GA

Tomorrow morning we start a small trip to meet up with the Florida wing of the Morrison Clan. Aiken to St. Augustine is about 300 miles and in typical Bogardus fashion we will be taking 2 days to get there while geocaching through five Georgia State Parks on a slightly zigzagy route. Our path will take us right through the small town of Santa Claus, GA.

I have known about this place almost since we have lived here, because some people would drive there to have their Christmas cards postmarked there. Always thought that would be a cool thing to do, but it is 100 miles away and who looks at the postmark anyway? We’ll find out who, because Donna is finishing up a couple of late Christmas cards tonight which we plan on mailing from there tomorrow.

I would have thought that there would already be a geocache in town, but nope there’s not. We have a small bison tube lying around the house that is perfect for hiding somewhere, so I’ve attached a couple of little super-strong magnets to it and if we spot a suitable location, there will be one there tomorrow.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 915

Worst BBQ Ever

We went geocaching today in Crawfordville, GA and A.H. Stephens State Park. We took along a coworker and because the Miata does not seat 3 comfortably we took her car. Crawfordville is where Hollywood comes calling when it needs to film in a quintessential small southern town. There have been about a dozen films that have used this town as a bit player in them and there are 8 caches here with names that are the titles of those movies. We looked for 4 and found 2. The two we missed I don’t count as DNFs because they were in locations that made us very nervous searching which was only heightened by the fact that we were driving a car with New Jersey plates. There were 6 caches in the state park that you can get to by land and we found 5 of them.

Probably the most recognizable movie that was filmed in town was “Sweet Home Alabama” and for lunch we decided to eat at the BBQ place that was used in the bar scenes (Stella’s Roadhouse) of the movie. We were talked into getting the Plate by the almost surly woman behind the counter at Heavy’s as it included meat, brunswick stew and coleslaw. We opted for a rib plate and a chicken plate to split between the three of us. The coleslaw was too vinegary and had way too much pickle taste. The “stew” was run through a food processor for too long as it was kind of a sickly looking brown mush. The only thing remotely edible was the meat and that was overpowered by the amount of BBQ sauce it was covered in. Interesting place to visit, but you don’t want to eat there.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911