This is Micanopy, Florida.
There's a two-block long Main Street with antique shops.
The street behind it is this quiet cathedral
of high trees and Spanish moss.
The thing to realize here is that the legs on the left
are my cousin David's, not his daughter Bailey's.
We're at the Devil's Milhopper, a sinkhole in Gainesville.
Daddy, why did you stop? What are you stopping there for?
What critters? I see a snake. Is that a snake?
It's moving!
Daddy, why is there a snake there? Why doesn't it move?
What's nature? Is nature god's mother?
Can we go now?
Car #1, and that bright red Georgia clay.
A small fraction of the headstones at Andersonville, Georgia.
The POW Museum here showed
the amazing resiliance of humanity,
in the face of some of its other less pleasant aspects.
"Kudzu sculpture" in northern Georgia. Those were trees, once.
The "bump gate" at FDR's place in Warm Springs--
he didn't have to get out of the car.
I spent a morning at this keen old cemetery in Atlanta.
"What do you do at a cemetery??" my cousin Jennifer asked.
"Oh, I see things."
The notion of family plots
was very literal here,
with marble edging & even front stoops.
What the--???
No, not a vampire; he had three terms as Atlanta's mayor.
Hey! I found him!!
Monuments and a MARTA train.
I call this grouping "Sexist Jerk and Family."
Consider: How many children did this couple have?
I don't suppose we can blame this on Microsoft....
I liked this epitaph
Back in the world of the living....
Talullah Gorge, northern Georgia
The Great Wallenda walked Talullah Gorge in 1970.
This is the remains of the northern anchor tower
for his cable.
The North Georgia mountains were just beautiful.
Somewhere between Dillard, GA and Highland, NC
you can drive under a waterfall (left center).
It drops into a pretty little pool.
J. Random small town, but with one heckuva
big courthouse looming above Main Street
Asheville, North Carolina
Asheville had a lot of sharp architecture...
including some very skinny skyscrapers...
and a memorial to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwood,
first woman doctor in the US,
who started her medical training in Asheville.
Station's Inn, Laurel Springs, North Carolina.
Photos from the Blue Ridge Parkway don't do it justice.
I guess I like advertising if it's old enough.
Foreground: The only gay car in Roanoke, Virginia?
In France, the village war memorials have chickens on top.
In Virginia....
The Scots-Irish Farm at the Frontier Culture
Museum, Staunton, Virginia.
I don't know that chicken's motivation,
but it sure was booking!
Staunton, Virginia, population 25,000, fell in the right place for an overnight stop, just off I-81 where the Blue Ridge Parkway meets the Shenandoah Valley. The Mill Street Grill had The Best Ribs I Have Ever Tasted--baby back ribs so tender I could eat them with a fork. Incredible. (For dessert--you will be hungry again some day--stop at Mrs. Rowe's, by the freeway, and get some pie to go. The coconut cream pie was the absolute opposite of perfunctory.)
In June's late-lingering light, I walked the old downtown and was enchanted by simple details: painted-lady gingerbread on a brick bungalow, the wrought-iron fence palings at Trinity Church, a wall of white stone with brick-red mortar, a shop sign: DOLLS PLATES BEARS GNOMES & GIFTS. When Staunton's industrial boom times faded, the remains didn't fester like northern towns I saw later (Altoona, Utica).
Welcome to Staunton (kinda rhymes with "phantom").
Same overpass, other side.
Such piled-up highway signs may look overwhelming,
but they were actually very easy to navigate by.
The next morning, waiting for the Jolly Roger
Haggle Shop to open, I snapped two photos of
the curving platform at the train station.
This is the reality Disneyland seeks to evoke.
See the water tower, up above the tracks.
Some people have totem animals; I stayed one night with a friend whose totems are leaves and fairies. This is his collection of "pixieware". I'd never heard of it.
Our nation's capital/Capitol, in passing. I wasn't too surprised to end up driving along the Mall; my sister told me of missing that same exit en route from Arlington to Baltimore.
Finally, j'arrive!
And Ecuadorean sailors prepare to depart
(tugboat waiting to the left)
I say it looks like another turkey.
Yes, they're really standing up there in the rigging.
More tall ships docked in Baltimore's harbor
and one leaving, as seen from the water taxi to Fells Point.
Actually, I recommend the Mussels Fra Diavolo
at Mary's Place, Punxsutawney, Penna.
If you happen to be going that way.
B&O Railroad Museum. Way cool.
Believe it or not, that's a steam locomotive
under that streamlining!
Ran into quite a few fellow dancers at the B&O.
I loved the enthusiasm of the hardcore rail buffs.
"Hey, what does this do?"
Carousel with chicken and retrievers.