The Not Key West Trip, part 3

 You should read all this in order, I think. You can access the first part here, all the pictures from this trip here.

 Tuesday, June 3

  The sun came up this morning as the same kind of big red ball that set last night. I suspect it's the red-dirt farming dust gives it that colour. The desk clerk thinks it's pollen, but we have pollen at home & the sun is never that kind of dim red ball. Especially when it's as high in the sky as it was when I saw it.

 Anyway. So I spent about half the day today sightseeing in Albany. Started off with a really good breakfast at a place on Old Dawson Road. Drove up and down Dawson Road 3 times, looking for it, before I noticed that it was on Old Dawson Road, which is a short distance to the south. Cafe was called Eggs Up, and I don't know when I've encountered such friendly service. The waitress was from New Mexico & so we talked about a lot of things Texas and New Mexico have in common. We're both amazed at the trees and the rivers around here, they're both present in such profusion. I had shrimp and grits, which of course reminded me of a certain someone who loves that particular dish ... not that I needed reminding. That someone is on my mind pretty regularly as a rule.

the pond at Radium Springs Gardens

 Took my time over coffee, as nothing opened before 9am and I had left the hotel by 7. Then I went to a place called Radium Springs, which used to be a resort area south of town. The old Casino Building was destroyed in successive floods, tornadoes, tropical storms and floods (again) four times in less than 20 years. It stood for about 100 years before the first disaster hit, and then the second, third, and fourth disasters hit before the repairs were complete each time, and in the end they had to tear it down. (One sign said 27 inches of rain fell in one day; another says 24 inches. I suspect that, at a certain point, three inches of rain just doesn't matter anymore.) But the grounds remain as a nice county park (except for those damn gnats; honestly, they make me feel like one of those children on the African Famine Charity commercials, with flies crawling all over their faces), with very nice groundskeeping and a city park on part of the land, gardens on another part, and two other (separate) parks on the grounds across the road and down the south end. Quite extensive. I spent a pleasant 90 minutes or so checking it out.

 Then I headed into town to see the other sights I'd identified. First stop was the Old Railroad Depot. It was closed. It sits athwart a brick-paved street with streetcar rails down the middle. There are maybe 5 or 6 buildings all told, each turned into a specialty historical site of one kind or another: the railroad museum, a general history museum, the regional archives, a museum of surveying, and so on. All were closed, so I just took some pictures of the buildings and went on to Ray Charles Plaza, which is a monument to a native son who made good. It's in a small park on the river front, very tastefully done, although hard to photograph because of the spacing of things, and the sun's position at the hour I was there wasn't conducive to good pictures, either. 

the Blue Hole exhibit

 Just down the street from that is the Flint RiverQuarium, which gives a good explication of the local water source. There are extensive caves under Albany, water-filled and explored by daring scuba divers. So far they've explored about 3/4 of a mile of caves down to a depth of about 1500', where water flows into the Florida Aquifer. The displays of marine life aren't as extensive as at the Texas State Aquarium, of course, but it's definitely worth the eight bucks (senior rate) to see. There was almost nobody else there, which was a big, big plus. 

 From there I drove to the western edge of downtown to see the local Art Museum. It was pretty much as I anticipated: three small galleries showing contemporary exhibitions. I won't say it wasn't interesting, though: the first gallery was a photographic display to do with Native American culture. About half the pics were taken in the early part of the 20th Century, and the rest were done by Wil Wilson, a Navajo photographer I was familiar with. If it weren't for the obsequiously apologetic dissing of the "biases of his time" when expounding on the older pictures, it would have been a well-conceived exhibition. 

 The second gallery contained acrylic paintings on lace paper by some South African woman. It shows extremely wealthy super-model women in extravagant luxury. That by itself was a little too Kardashian for me, but the video of her talking about the burden of having to spend sooo much time getting your hair and nails done.... It was too much. She's a good example of why we should eat the rich.

 The final gallery was a tiny room upstairs where a local artist's work was juried and exhibited: four ... let's call them tapestries .. of odd cloth remnants in random shapes sewn together. It was supposed to represent skin colours and earth colours. I suppose so, but in the end, to me it was just some random bits of cloth sewn together. It was vague enough to accept any explanation you choose to give it, like most modern art.

 After that I had a nice drive west to Fort Gaines, during which I could listen, largely uninterrupted by the Voice of Google Maps, to Rock of Ages, and notice that the narrator's accent would sound frequently like a gentle southern boy moved to Californie, and then suddenly, and briefly, like a Dame of the British Empire for half a sentence. It was interesting, and slight enough not to become irritating. If only he would fully pronounce the last three syllables of each sentence.

 At Fort Gaines, on a bluff overlooking the Chatahoochee River, which is the border between Georgia and Alabama, there is a collection of log buildings called the Frontier Village. These old buildings were rescued from other locations in the county (Early County, if you care) and brought here and renovated, and for some reason decorated with multicoloured Christmas lights, for the edification of people who had never seen how their ancestors lived in the American South before telegraphs and electricity and YouTube. But it was just the buildings; there was no furniture, no rustic tools or implements, and not much in the way of explanation. I've seen enough of this type of historical assemblage to not wonder about things, but if I had small children seeing it for the first time, I'd have been very disappointed.

 Life on the road was a little frustrating after that. I couldn't get a strong signal anywhere in that part of Georgia, and couldn't get RoadTrippers to load; all I had was a few numbers I'd written on the paper state highway map where I'd highlighted my intended route, and I couldn't remember what those particular numbers signified. So I just set off north on the planned route, looking for what the paper map called Highway 161, where I would turn toward the next county in my excursion; and off I went.

 This is when I discovered that the highway numbers on the map aren't reflected on the actual road. There is, apparently, no Highway 161 outside the imagination of the company that draws maps for AAA. After overshooting the turn by about six miles, I set my Google Maps for the next town and learned that, in Reality Georgia, Highway 161 is known as Lucy Lane for a few hundred yards, and then it's called Cotton Hill Road; there being no obvious reason to make that particular switch. Anyway, got where I was going. By this time it was well past lunchtime, so when I stopped at a C-store to try RoadTrippers again (still no signal; only 4G, which it appears is inadequate for that program) I started to buy one of those awful convenience-store sandwiches, the kind with cheap cuts of mystery meat between two slices of white bread decorated with a slice of indeterminate cheese food; but he wanted eight and a half dollars for that miserable imitation sandwich, so I declined, and wondered yet again when it was that Trump was going to bring the prices down on Day One.

 My map didn't indicate anymore planned sightseeing stops before what I remembered I would see in Cordele -- billed as the Confederate Launch Pad, a Titan missile standing by the freeway -- so I just went on, enjoying the good weather and the breeze in my hair and the doings of Junior Bender on audio, until I got to that missile. Cordele is a big enough town, and on a freeway, so it has 5G service and I could finally consult RoadTrippers, to find that the two things I missed after Ft Gaines were instructions to myself. So I didn't actually miss anything. I went to a diner for a refreshment -- by now it was too late to bother with lunch -- and programmed my next couple of travel legs into Google Maps. In my planning, I'd expected to spend the night at Dawson, about 30 miles northwest of Albany, but I made it farther than that, so now I'm in Warner Robins, Georgia, where there's an aviation museum at the old air base that I plan to see first thing tomorrow when it opens at 9AM. 

 Went out for dinner first thing, and found I was at a sports bar; not just any sports bar, but an axe-throwing bar.  Who'd'a ever have thunk you could mix axe-throwing and drinking? There's a row of targets along one wall, and people stand there with their brews or booze and throw axes. Sure, why not. And there's a trivia game going on at the same time, and between questions, they play really loud music and ask questions about it for bonus points. So I got something to eat and drink and was able to watch the USWNT crush Jamaica. Most of it, anyway; by the time it was 3:0 I was done for the day, so I didn't see the last goal, but only read about it on Messenger when S texted to tell me it had happened. 

 Good enough. 

The Not Key West trip, part 2

You should read all this in order, I think. You can access the first part here, and all the pictures from this trip here.

 Monday, June 2

 It was, as expected, another beautiful day: clear skies, not too hot. But I had to start off with half a day's drive on freeway, where you can't hear an audiobook if a truck passes, so the top stayed up until about eleven, while I listened to Rock of Ages, a novel in the Junior Bender series about a burglar who does detective work for other criminals. It's set in Los Angeles and written with a wonderfully wry humour; we've listened to two or three books in the series already and enjoyed them all. We had started listening to this same book on the way back from Colorado last month, but the reader's breathy style -- he fades the last 3 syllables of every sentence -- and the poor quality of the little $10 bluetooth speaker we have to use in that car made it impossible to follow the action over normal road noise. I've now bought a hopefully better bluetooth speaker for the Subaru, so maybe we'll be better able to hear when we travel in it. But I checked the book out again for this trip, hoping the audio setup in the Jag would make it possible to listen to it. It does. It's still a little irritating that he speaks the end of every sentence so quietly that I have to turn the volume way up, and so when Google Maps interrupts with some directional guidance that voice can be heard by drivers on the other side of the highway, but at least I can hear the book.

 I had breakfast at a Wendy's along the highway, having given up on finding anything more local. They have a surprisingly tasty breakfast burrito -- not the least bit authentic, of course, but good, cheap and filling, and not too high in calories. Lunch was at a local fried-chicken place that had excellent green beans as a side; the chicken wasn't as good as what I'd had in Fort Worth a few months ago, but it was OK.

 I got the first handful of counties after lunch: first Union County, where there was nothing to see. In the little town of Colquitt, seat of Miller County, I stopped to see a carved Indian head that I'd found listed on Roadside America. According to the sign there, the sculptor gave one to each state as a celebration of the contribution of Native Americans to our culture. Yeah, okay. Then I passed through Baker and Mitchell Counties without stopping, and into Colquitt County, where I visited the grave of a one-time circus owner. His tombstone is the surprisingly impressive elephant I mentioned in yesterday's post. I also drove through the county seat's historical district, which is impressive in no way that I could see. Lots of early-20th-century nondescript buildings around an equally nondescript courthouse, basically. From there I turned northwest and went through the unremarkable Worth County to Albany, in Dougherty County, where I'm spending the night. 

 Tomorrow I expect to spend most of the day here in Albany, a town of about seventy thousand people. It has half a dozen places of interest to me. Then I'll head west, back to the state line, and then north again for a pass through several other counties. If my plans hold good, I'll end up spending tomorrow night in a little town only about 30 miles northwest of Albany. We shall see.

 There's a Mexican restaurant not far from my hotel, so I went over there intending to have dinner. But the place was so busy that instead I just went to the bar to have a drink, and ended up having a conversation with an agricultural chemical salesman from some small town in Alabama who works this territory. We spent about an hour just talking about everything and nothing; the only thing I really learned from the conversation was that the swarms of insects I've been dealing with every time I stop the car are gnats, not mosquitoes, so that was a relief to hear. For dinner I ended up just getting a sandwich from the Arby's in front of my hotel. It was as good as you might expect. I wasn't particularly hungry anyway. Would have liked to get some more of those green beans but I don't know if there's a Jack's in Albany. Certainly not one within walking distance.