Monday, 16 December 2019
 |
| today's route |
The drive
Google's fixation of sending me by their idea of the fastest route, I've discovered, sends me down roads my RV shouldn't be on. It did that today, but I chose a route that went on more main roads.
First, that took me through Auburn, and I saw more of the town than I'd seen before, including a Winn Dixie, which reminded me that I'm in the South again.
I went past several agricultural-related buildings for Auburn University, such as their Beef Cattle Evaluation Center. I don't connect cattle with either Alabama or Auburn University, which shows how wrong I've been. Heaven knows I've been passing enough fields with cows in them to have changed my mind before this.
Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site
Tuskegee, by the way, is pronounced with a hard g, not a soft one as you'd usually have when it's followed by e's like that. Just think of our slang word "gee" and you'll see why it seemed odd to me. But I was assured by several people that it's pronounced tus-KEE-gee, like in the name McGee.
I hadn't been able to find as much about this historic site online as I'd expected to do, seeing as it's part of the National Park Service, so I was unprepared for what I found. Most NPS sites are extremely well organized, making it easy for visitors to figure out where to go to learn what they came to see. This one was the opposite. Very unorganized and no consideration given at all for disabled visitors.
Maybe what I saw is an example of the same lack of facilities and resources the airmen themselves faced during WWII. Instead of the Visitor Center like I'm finding at all National Park Services facilities, the signs led me to a parking lot facing a wide hilltop with a few NPS signs scattered here and there. From the hill, I got a good view of the airfield and the remaining buildings below, and signs that told me to take a long walk down a hill without telling me what I'd find at the bottom of it.
I think the version of a visitor center that's here is in one of the original hangars still at the airfield, but that's not clear at all from the signs.
Here's what I saw, beginning with what the airmen saw first.
 |
| scene at left, today |
 |
| entrance gate in 1943 |
 |
| men training for war allowed women to guard to gate |
 |
| detail from above left |
From the hilltop above.
 |
| (the sign was dim and it was raining - I did what I could with the picture) |
 |
| the remaining buildings today |
 |
| detail from above sign |
 |
| detail from lower right of above sign |
Information about the airmen.
For more information about their contributions to the war effort, as well as to the fight for desegregation, you can check this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/Tuskegee-Airmen
Since I delayed my departure yesterday specifically so I could come here, I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed. This site is not remotely set up for people with mobility problems. Maybe it's okay with the Park Service that we drive down to the hangar where they say there are displays, and park somewhere around there, but there was absolutely no sign of it at all. Nothing anywhere that said here's what to do if you use a walker or have a wheelchair or have old joints that don't want to walk half a mile down a hill (let alone back up again) to see whatever's inside that hangar. And let's face it, many of the people who might be interested in visiting this site fall into one of those categories.
Next time I'll drive down there and look for a place to park and wait for them to tell me not to. Today I'd spent so much time walking around the enormous area with the widely spaced signs, I just didn't want to take more time to do that. But I was disappointed.
After I'd walked the dogs around the area, I called the campground near Greenville where I'd hoped to stay tonight. It's owned by the city, so I hadn't been able to reach anybody over the weekend. This time I got a person who said, sure there are campsites available but they're expecting to have a tornado come through the area later today.
Good heads-up. I didn't really want to drive into a tornado zone.
I checked the weather online and saw just what he was talking about. There was a huge weather system moving through Texas, then coming south in Louisiana, and across Mississippi before heading north in Alabama, with Greenville right in the way. It looked like far south Alabama wouldn't get anything but rain, so I called the Ozark KOA where I'll be staying next week and asked for a space tonight, and then scooted on down.
The drive south
I decided to go by way of far eastern Alabama, along the Chattahoochee River, which forms part of the border between Alabama and Georgia. Google didn't like it because it's such an incredibly inefficient route, but I insisted.
I passed through part of the Tuskegee National Forest and saw that they'd had a fire there. It reminded me of the way Bastrop State Park looked after a bad fire a few years ago, except this fire here didn't look nearly as extensive.
I think there's a town or village near here called Little Texas. I passed a sign that looked like it was announcing the city limits, except there weren't any houses or other buildings at all. Nothing. Just the sign.
I drove past huge cotton fields, also a turf farm.
I passed a very homemade sign saying Pigs 4 Sale.
I heard Terry Gross's interview on Fresh Air with Charlize Theron. Part of it was her talking about growing up in South Africa under apartheid. She said the farm where she grew up was completely integrated. But when she went off to school, she saw in their textbooks that all the heroes were those of Afrikaners, with no mention of the heroes of the many other cultures in South Africa.
I thought how much like our textbooks in the US that is - when I was growing up, I never knew African-Americans did anything at all toward building our country, let alone supplied heroes for us. The more I learn about our history, the more clearly I'm seeing that what we had for much of my life (and long before) was apartheid, just as ugly and rigid a system as that in South Africa.
Historic Eufaula
Coming into Eufaula, the Big Bass Capital of the World, I saw that it is indeed a historic town, if for nothing other than its architecture. I found this site online that shows good photos of the old houses in town. https://blog.com/historic-homes-of-eufaula
I passed a small pond with a bird feeder on a pole in the middle of it, and on the feeder was sitting a Great Blue Heron. A real one.
I passed very large Lake Eufaula, where one can find all those bass that the city's proud of.
Back on the road
All day I've been hearing a sound from my tires, I think, that's making me worried. It started to sound like one of them is flat, but when I stopped by the side of the road to check, I couldn't see any problem. But I couldn't check very closely because the shoulder was so narrow and there was a lot of traffic. I have 4 tires on the rear axle, so it shouldn't be a dangerous situation, but I need to get it checked.
I passed a sign advertising Emu Oil.
I passed a house that seemed to have a fire coming from the side yard, and when I got near I saw a Volvo and a pickup parked next to each other in the yard, and they both seemed to be on fire. But I didn't see anyone around, no fire trucks or people tending the fire or any indication anyone was worried besides me. Weird.
I kept passing cotton fields.
I saw a mound of goats in a field. Literally. I guess it was a herd of goats that were climbing all over a mound of hay or something, but I couldn't see what they were standing on. It just looked like a mound of goats.
I saw in the distance a very large helicopter that looked like this.
It reminded me that Alabama has a very strong military presence statewide.
Coming into Ozark, I passed a building labeled Ozark City Schools Educational Support. The odd thing was that the building was almost certainly a car dealership in a former life. They had plenty of parking space around the building. I thought this was a very sensible use of an unused building.
 |
| detail from sign at left |
 |
| detail from sign at right |
 |
| detail from sign at left |
For more information about their contributions to the war effort, as well as to the fight for desegregation, you can check this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/Tuskegee-Airmen
Since I delayed my departure yesterday specifically so I could come here, I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed. This site is not remotely set up for people with mobility problems. Maybe it's okay with the Park Service that we drive down to the hangar where they say there are displays, and park somewhere around there, but there was absolutely no sign of it at all. Nothing anywhere that said here's what to do if you use a walker or have a wheelchair or have old joints that don't want to walk half a mile down a hill (let alone back up again) to see whatever's inside that hangar. And let's face it, many of the people who might be interested in visiting this site fall into one of those categories.
Next time I'll drive down there and look for a place to park and wait for them to tell me not to. Today I'd spent so much time walking around the enormous area with the widely spaced signs, I just didn't want to take more time to do that. But I was disappointed.
After I'd walked the dogs around the area, I called the campground near Greenville where I'd hoped to stay tonight. It's owned by the city, so I hadn't been able to reach anybody over the weekend. This time I got a person who said, sure there are campsites available but they're expecting to have a tornado come through the area later today.
Good heads-up. I didn't really want to drive into a tornado zone.
I checked the weather online and saw just what he was talking about. There was a huge weather system moving through Texas, then coming south in Louisiana, and across Mississippi before heading north in Alabama, with Greenville right in the way. It looked like far south Alabama wouldn't get anything but rain, so I called the Ozark KOA where I'll be staying next week and asked for a space tonight, and then scooted on down.
The drive south
I decided to go by way of far eastern Alabama, along the Chattahoochee River, which forms part of the border between Alabama and Georgia. Google didn't like it because it's such an incredibly inefficient route, but I insisted.
I passed through part of the Tuskegee National Forest and saw that they'd had a fire there. It reminded me of the way Bastrop State Park looked after a bad fire a few years ago, except this fire here didn't look nearly as extensive.
I think there's a town or village near here called Little Texas. I passed a sign that looked like it was announcing the city limits, except there weren't any houses or other buildings at all. Nothing. Just the sign.
I drove past huge cotton fields, also a turf farm.
I passed a very homemade sign saying Pigs 4 Sale.
I heard Terry Gross's interview on Fresh Air with Charlize Theron. Part of it was her talking about growing up in South Africa under apartheid. She said the farm where she grew up was completely integrated. But when she went off to school, she saw in their textbooks that all the heroes were those of Afrikaners, with no mention of the heroes of the many other cultures in South Africa.
I thought how much like our textbooks in the US that is - when I was growing up, I never knew African-Americans did anything at all toward building our country, let alone supplied heroes for us. The more I learn about our history, the more clearly I'm seeing that what we had for much of my life (and long before) was apartheid, just as ugly and rigid a system as that in South Africa.
Historic Eufaula
Coming into Eufaula, the Big Bass Capital of the World, I saw that it is indeed a historic town, if for nothing other than its architecture. I found this site online that shows good photos of the old houses in town. https://blog.com/historic-homes-of-eufaula
I passed a small pond with a bird feeder on a pole in the middle of it, and on the feeder was sitting a Great Blue Heron. A real one.
I passed very large Lake Eufaula, where one can find all those bass that the city's proud of.
Back on the road
All day I've been hearing a sound from my tires, I think, that's making me worried. It started to sound like one of them is flat, but when I stopped by the side of the road to check, I couldn't see any problem. But I couldn't check very closely because the shoulder was so narrow and there was a lot of traffic. I have 4 tires on the rear axle, so it shouldn't be a dangerous situation, but I need to get it checked.
I passed a sign advertising Emu Oil.
I passed a house that seemed to have a fire coming from the side yard, and when I got near I saw a Volvo and a pickup parked next to each other in the yard, and they both seemed to be on fire. But I didn't see anyone around, no fire trucks or people tending the fire or any indication anyone was worried besides me. Weird.
I kept passing cotton fields.
I saw a mound of goats in a field. Literally. I guess it was a herd of goats that were climbing all over a mound of hay or something, but I couldn't see what they were standing on. It just looked like a mound of goats.
I saw in the distance a very large helicopter that looked like this.
 |
| Chinook helicopter |
Coming into Ozark, I passed a building labeled Ozark City Schools Educational Support. The odd thing was that the building was almost certainly a car dealership in a former life. They had plenty of parking space around the building. I thought this was a very sensible use of an unused building.
No comments:
Post a Comment