Georgia - Day 32 - traveling through Rome

James H. "Sloppy" Floyd State Park, Summerville

Saturday, 29 April 2023

I didn't wake up until 4:00, putting me already an hour behind.  I got up to find that Jimmy had pooped a lot in their crate - in the crate, not on the absorbent pads I put in the crate specifically for this purpose.  On the plus side (not always easy to find), both kitties had managed to stay away from it so the mess wasn't as bad as it could have been (and has been before).  Still, not the best thing to wake up to.

today's route

Thanks to running late, we didn't get on the road until 9:30.  You can see it was a short drive from the campground to Rome, and in 2 hours we'd already stopped at a Tractor Supply (propane) and a Kroger (I got lost trying to find it so it took extra time) and were driving in the very hilly old part of Rome, looking for the "historic" Clock Tower.

The town of Rome is, like its namesake in Italy, built on 7 hills - and its topography inspired the founders to give it its name.  The clock tower was built at the top of one of them and is visible all over the city.

Clock Tower

That same brick wall, looking along the street.

Apparently it's considered "historic" because of its age: the tower was built in 1871 to house a water tower; the clock and bell were added in 1872.  I thought it would be a good place to stop and walk around with Dexter, but the parking lot at the tower was miniscule, and the street was so narrow and steep I didn't think parking the RV there was a good idea.

I thought I was turning into a parking area designated for the clock tower.  That's the green arrow on the left.

Out of sight on the right is an entrance to a parking garage - of course, off limits to me.  The green arrow on the right shows the access to an area that's raised from the space on the left, where I thought I might be able to park out of people's way.  What I didn't realize is that it was exceptionally raised.  The ramp to get there was so incredibly steep - and short - that I just couldn't get up it.  

So I tried to reverse back down - and my rear bumper got stuck on the lower level.  When I tried to go forward up the hill to loosen it, the tires just spun out and the smell of rubber was serious.  I tried that a couple of times, and then tried turning the tires in a different direction to see if that helped find traction - and it did.  I managed to scrape my rear bumper off the asphalt and turned to continue down the hilly street to find somewhere else.  

Going down that steep street was actually nerve-wracking itself because I wasn't sure how much tread I had left or what condition my brakes were in, because it was really a very steep hill.  Rivals the hills of San Francisco.  We managed to get down to the next cross street and found a parking place that didn't block a driveway and didn't scrape on the trees.  And I stopped, and turned off the engine, and just sat there shaking.  It was all really scary.

But Dexter still wanted a walk, so eventually I pulled myself together and we trudged back up the hill to the clock tower.  Good thing we've been staying in hilly campgrounds lately or we'd never have made it up there.

That spire is the
1st Baptist Church.

A better view of the tower.

As we were climbing the hill, it turned noon and the bell in the clock tower began chiming, along with bells in several neighboring churches, including the Baptists.  Actually, it sounded like the various churches had coordinated so they played their tunes and chimes separately from each other, which makes a lot of sense (which seems in short supply sometimes).  It was a nice accompaniment to our climb.

The tower is 104' tall and now houses a museum, which I didn't try to go in because of Dext.  We climbed even farther up to the tower's ground level, finding nicer garden areas as we climbed.

The garden at the parking level.
Sign enlarged below right.

Sign from above left.

I was curious whether there were any gardens outside Georgia on this butterfly trail, so I looked it up and learned that yes, there are a whole lot of them all over the country.  And you too can plant such a garden and then register it on the map.  Here's the website   https://rosalynncarterbutterflytrail.org  where you can find lists of locations of both public and private gardens (the private ones are only shown by state, not by address).  Also the kind of habitat butterflies need and how to provide that for both container and in-ground gardens.  There are gardens as far away as Alaska and Maine and Canadian provinces.

Speaking of gardens, as we came back down the hill to the RV, we passed a house that had figured out what to do with a front yard that was very visible and very not usable.

closer view below right

The house next door had actually tried to make a normal front yard out of this slope - and it looked okay but I sure wouldn't have wanted to cut that grass or weed those flower beds.  This one seemed much more sensible and just as attractive.

I'd intended to run some more errands before leaving town, but that little episode in the non-parking area really left me shaken.  Instead I just made one stop - at a post office to get my ballot postmarked before mailing it.  In Texas, I get an absentee ballot because I'm old but it's counted only if it arrives on or before the election (May 6th) or is postmarked before and arrives no later than May 8th.  I ended up paying for 2-day delivery just to be sure it got there.  These days even school board elections matter a lot.

From there I drove out to the state park, which was farther from town than I'd expected.  Some of the houses we passed had what you might call a backwoods appearance to them.  And I'm afraid I expect to find very conservative opinions in the residents of such houses, so I was surprised to see this sign in front of one of them: "Flood The Polls - Vote Abortion." 

We were in our campsite by 2:30.  Dext and I walked around the campground, only to learn that it too was bigger than I'd expected from looking at the map.  Lots of walking and yet more hills.  I keep forgetting that the Appalachians extend down into Georgia - a fact I should have remembered from actually driving in them coming across the state from east to west.

Lots and lots of trees, apparently a very popular park because I saw large groups of people picnicking in the day use area as well as the campground being full.

It was named for a state legislator who represented this area for many years.  James Floyd was given the nickname "Sloppy" in high school - he was unusually thin and his football jersey (this is the South so of course he played football) flopped around his body and his coach thought he looked sloppy.  "Sloppy" is on his tombstone.

In 1964, Julian Bond was one of 5 Black people elected to the state house - the first since 1907.  Bond publicly supported those who were protesting the Vietnam War.  "Sloppy" Floyd led the charge to stop Bond from being seated in the house, claiming it was because his opposition to the war would prevent him from swearing to uphold the US Constitution.  But because so many Americans opposed the war that, about 10 years later, even Pres. Nixon agreed to end it, it's hard to escape the idea that Floyd's and others' opposition to Bond was because he was too uppity to tolerate.

Apparently he should have picked a different basis for his opposition to Bond, because the US Supreme Court eventually ruled that the state Leg. was violating Bond's right to free speech and ordered that he be seated.  The case was titled Bond v. Floyd.

There's always something in the South.