Road Trip

The Wedding

This is one of only a few photos I managed to take that was neither blurry or washed out before the battery went dead. The groom is the reason we were there, Stuart, a hulk of a man child is the son of Sally, Donna’s childhood friend. The second to the left bridesmaid is Claire, Stuart’s sister. We got to watch them grow from infants to small children as they lived two doors away from us the 4 years that Donna and I lived in New Orleans. After we had gone our separate ways, us to NJ and they to VA, we always visited a couple times a year.

Tonight after the reception, Donna and I came back to the Al, Judy, Mark & Kristy Herman Room where we changed real quick, so we could go back out and grab a geocache that was physically 700′ away from our hotel, but a quarter of a mile walk away. We now have one find in Louisiana. On our trip back we plan on grabbing one in Mississippi and Alabama.

Greetings From The Al, Judy, Mark & Kristy Herman Room

Last night we were visiting one of Donna’s friends from the Navy, so we spent time catching up instead of me surfing the web (plus they didn’t have wireless.)

Today was spent on I-10 heading west in the rain. It did stop in time for us to do a brief driving tour of Donna’s childhood neighborhood that was devastated during Katrina. Donna’s Sister Sandy visited the place a year after, in 2006 and the house was empty a complete wreck. Today, their block is unrecognizable as new homes have gone up all along the street with still a few empty lots. The picture above is what stands at their old address of 6560. It is a nice house and all, but it doesn’t fit in with the look of the surrounding properties, plus the large live oaks that stood in the front and back yards are gone, replaced by small patches of grass thus removing the major part of the charm of the place.

This evening was spent watching the wedding rehearsal and eating at the rehearsal dinner of Stuart Lewis, son of Donna’s childhood friend Sally who we watched grow from a cute little baby into a big hulk of a man. Friday morning, after tomorrow evening’s nuptials, we head home, covering what took us four days to do on the way in a mere two.

While in Louisiana’s capitol city we are staying at The Cook Hotel on the campus of LSU. Like buying a brick with your name on it to support the local Veteran’s Park, alumni have sponsored rooms here, hence tonight’s post title.

Southwest Georgia Swept

Georgia Post Offices anyone?

Maybe because we didn’t travel as far today (only 200 miles instead of the 300 of the past two days), there were only a couple of items of interest to report, 1) the breakfast of choice in the small town of Colquitt, GA is a cinnamon bun and a Bud Light and 2) we saw a person riding a bicycle that you stood on and pedaled in a stair stepper motion (maybe this.)

Twelve geocaches today. Nine Georgia Counties, five GA DeLorme pages, two State Parks and one DNF.

16,000 Peanut Farms

Somewhere outside Fort Gaines, Ga the Purple Whale surpassed the 16,000 mile mark. Today we visited 2 Georgia State Parks and a State Conservation Park. We scored caches in 3 GA DeLorme Map Pages and 11 Georgia Counties. Along the road today we spotted a fox squirrel, a turtle and a field mouse. We also spotted Jesus carrying a cross and a naked lady with a lizard in her hair.

Andersonville

Very humbling site. Including the National Prisoner of War Museum.

Lunch prior was at a Mennonite restaurant outside of Montezuma, GA called Yoder’s.

Seen while on the road today: A cyclist riding a high-wheel unicycle, a very drunk African American riding a chopper styled bicycle, a man riding a horse and a sea plane flying low overhead while nowhere near any water.

Best sign of the day, on the outlying area of Fort Benning – TANK TRAIL DETOUR – Come on, a detour? You’re driving a freakin’ tank, you don’t need no stinking detour.

Four caches total, netting 4 GA counties and 1 Delorme page.

14,000 Orange Trees

The return trip from the Land of Orange Trees was an adventure. First I forgot to create a pocket query for the three remaining counties we wanted to get in south Georgia. Then we couldn’t find free Wi-Fi anywhere for me to get online to make one. When we did find free wi-fi at Mickey D’s the charge on the laptop battery was so low it was insufficient to get the query information downloaded to the GPSr and PDA.

We walked over to a Cracker Barrel from McDonalds for lunch and as we were led to a table Donna asked if there was one near an outlet (so we could charge up the laptop.) The hostess made a sharp left and seated us across the room from where she was original intending to place us. This turned out to be a little good, wall plug, and very bad, because when our waitress arrived with Donna’s water and my sweet tea she promptly spilled both big glasses on the table and on me. Donna didn’t get wet, but I got a kind of wet/damp on one sleeve and both upper pant legs.

After the pre lunch “bath”, things were nothing but better, as we were now out of Florida, off the awful Interstate and onto the beautiful back roads of Georgia. But first, one of the caches we needed (Lowndes County) was within walking distance of the Cracker Barrel. As a bonus it turned out that not only did it satisfy the county, but was also worth a needed Delorme page.

Cache number two, which was for Lanier County, took us to the lovely small town of Lakeland, GA. The “Welcome To” proclaimed it was the the Georgia’s Historic Mural City. On our circuitous route through town on GA135 we didn’t see any murals…until we crossed Main Street where we noticed a lot of folks dressed up and several Model A Fords parked. We quickly parked, jumped out and walked towards the excitement. They were filming something with the towns folks posing near a building with one of the murals. We asked a couple of the locals who were watching like we were, but didn’t get a real solid answer. Once the thing broke up we wandered around a bit found a few of the apparently many interesting murals.

The last cache we found counted for Atkinson County and was called “Willacoochee Choo Choo” and I’ll let my geocaching.com log do the talking here:

Just from the title I was worried about this one. Little Red Cabooses are our kryptonite and we had already lucked out and found one on this trip, so I just knew we would never find this one! Thanks for this not being a magnetic key holder stuck somewhere on the thousands of square feet of metal on the undercarriage of a train car.

It was just a plain ol’ 35mm film canister well integrated into the environment.

13,000 Geocaches

Well, we are 1/13th of the way there after today. Our 1,000th find came in the town of Eastman, GA at a historical home that is now a museum, open only by appointment. The find happened in typical fashion, the GPSr led us to the base of a tree with a nice bit of shrubbery all around its base, the perfect spot to hide a cache, but it wasn’t there. Believe me, we tried to make it be there, we each walked all around the tree twice, separately, but it just wasn’t there. We then checked a couple of surrounding trees and bushes with the same lack of discovery. Finally I started looking under the porch of the house and there it was, thirty eight feet from GZ.

The Purple Whale passed the 13,000 mile mark some where between the 1,000 find and the town of Abbeville, GA where the above court house is.