Georgia - Day 11 - Columbus, to Pine Mountain

FDR State Park, Pine Mountain

Monday, 3 April, 2023

today's route -
starting in the lower right corner and
then heading west and north

After a month of sitting mostly in one place, it felt good to get back on the road.  Though of course that wasn't without problems: my knee started hurting again yesterday afternoon and is still bad today, making it harder to drive, and Google typically failed to tell me about a turn, so I went some way down the road before figuring out it was the wrong way and then finding a place to turn around.  You know, typical stuff.

Seven miles out of Cordele, I came across the Georgia Veterans Memorial Park.  It's touted as being an attraction for Cordele (which doesn't offer much for tourists) and was the location for that hot air balloon festival recently.  Seven miles isn't particularly far but I'd gotten the impression the park was actually in town.

I went back over the same route I traveled to Americus and Plains last month, but this time the wisteria had gone.  I feel really lucky to have seen it in all its glorious wild profusion.

I drove past a lot of farmland today.  In some, I saw what looked like tobacco beginning to grow.  I passed several very large pecan plantations.  And where there weren't farms, there were areas that would have been designated forests in many other states.  Lots and lots of mixed trees.

I passed a farmhouse with a wide porch on 3 sides, and 1 of those sides was screened in.  My idea of a perfect house.

Today I suddenly noticed red dirt.  The red dirt that Georgia is famous for.  For some reason I'd driven over a lot of south Georgia and never noticed it until today.  And now it's really obvious.

I passed the entrance to Fort Benning Military Reservation.  This US Army post is so famous even I've heard about it.  When I read its history in Wikipedia, I realized why - many of our country's most essential military functions have originated or trained here.  After WWI, then Lt. Col. George C. Marshall was given a commanding role here and, having decided much of the death from WWI was a result of poorly trained troops, reorganized the Army's training program.  (Reminds me of Russia's current troop problem in Ukraine.)  

Ft. Benning was named for a Confederate officer and, as one result of George Floyd's murder, this base is being renamed to Fort Moore, with the ceremony scheduled for next month.  There's a lot of interesting information on this page, if you're interested.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Fort-Benning

During this drive we started getting rain, sometimes heavy rain.  The sky was so overcast and the rain so thick that the light was too dim for me to even read my directions.  And we got a little lightning, too.  Not the best driving conditions.

Georgia has a town called La Grange.  (Cue ZZ Top.)

And we came to Columbus.  The National Civil War Naval Museum is here, and claims to be the only museum that tells about both the Union and the Confederate navies during the Civil War.

I stopped at a recycling dropoff location I'd found online and got rid of everything but my glass.  And since I'd accumulated quite a bit of recycling stuff in the last few weeks, that was a big relief.

I routed us to Ma Rainey's house, intending to stop and at least take photos of the outside.  But the street was very narrow and I didn't like to stop there.  The house is open for tours and has a parking area to the side, but it was already full with cars and visitors were waiting on the front porch to go in, so I just kept driving.  If you can't remember who she was,  here's a website about her house   https://parks.columbusga.gov/Ma-Rainey-Home and one that shows the historical marker in front   https://www.hmdb.org/"Ma"-Rainey-Home.  A place I'd like to stop on another visit.

Not far down the street, I came to the Springer Opera House, where Ma Rainey once performed.  This link for the historical marker mentions a long list of other notables who performed here (e.g. Oscar Wilde).   https://www.hmdb.org/Springer-Opera-House

And driving through town I came to something a little unusual, described in this historical marker.   https://www.hmdb.org/Fit-For-Man-And-Beast

In fact, this city seemed practically papered with historical markers.  Here's one last one:   https://www.hmdb.org/Birthplace-of-Georgia-Woman-Suffrage-Movement  Manages to show several views into the lives of women then, not all of them good.

I couldn't find a dog park for Dexter, but I did find Woodruff Riverfront Park, that looked like a nice park where we could walk.  And it was, although thanks to that heavy rain, it was pretty soggy.  The river that the park fronts on is the Chattahoochee; it begins in the Blue Ridge Mountains, runs south to Atlanta, then turns west to become the southern half of the Georgia-Alabama border.  Columbus is near the point where that borderline starts.

The Chattahoochee River looking south 
(with Phenix City, AL, on the other side).

The Chattahoochee River facing north
with some white water visible in the distance.

There was an extensive walking trail running in both directions - you can see parts of it in these photos.  Dext and I walked a little ways and then came back up to the street, where we found this sculpture:

There wasn't a plaque or sign or any explanation anywhere
so I have no idea why this cow was here.

Continuing through town, a sign told me we'd just missed Columbus's 15th annual Food Truck Festival.  They say this year they had 43 food trucks from around the region.

There are trees everywhere in town.  Sadly, the local Petco and Winn Dixie were both poorly stocked.  Mondays are often times when stores are low in things from the weekend, but what I found looked more like a failure to even offer the things I wanted.  Oh, well.  The trees were nice.

Heading north-ish from town, I learned GA-27 is also called the Scenic Hometown Highway.  It's apparently one of several such designations in Georgia.

The town of Hamilton calls itself "The Heart of Georgia," which I think is what Atlanta also called itself.  I guess Georgia has extra heart.  In Hamilton, I found an interesting historical marker.   https://www.hmdb.org/Hamilton-Female-College  Hamilton is also the Harris County seat, with a courthouse that looks very antebellum: red brick and tall white columns.  The water tower reads: "Go Tigers!" and you can guess what their high school mascot is.

We continued to have rain off and on all day, so things were pretty soggy by the time I finally found the turn for the FDR State Park.  Actually, I wouldn't have found it if the state hadn't posted a small sign I almost missed.  Google's directions, I learned later, would have taken me in by the back route and added many miles to the trip.  

The campground was pretty full, and a lot of it was school-age kids.  There were so many it looked like a group trip, though it may have just been a bunch of families getting together.  A camp host told me we were looking at Spring Break, that things had been very different just a few days ago.  Our campsite was right across from the playground, so I got the full treatment.  But it was good to see kids jumping and running around and doing something besides staring at computer screens.