Catching Up

Being a fulltimer (we live in our RV) we have a lifestyle of freedom that most can only dream of.  We volunteer for various national and state parks, picking them based on where we want to be for a winter or summer.  Every place we visit gives us new things to do and learn but each place also has its challenges.  Two national parks we volunteered for required a four hour, one way drive to get groceries.  Of course basic supplies were closer but very expensive - at least $4 for a half gallon of milk.  Fresh foods were equally expensive, when available, and were not in that great of shape.  So we evolved into once a month shopping trips and had to develop a way to store and preserve large quantities of supplies.  Luckily, the parks helped their volunteers with this and provided residential refrigerators and chest freezers.  The same was true with basic needs such as water and power, although not always plentiful or reliable.  It was just another part of the adventure that kept you on your toes and developing strategies to accommodate the situation.

Being nomadic and spending great amounts of time in remote regions of the country raises the difficulty level for maintaining communications, especially through the internet.  We managed fairly well our first two years on the road but this past year we have been landing in places that our only option for internet access has been through our Verizon Jetpack.  This method of connecting to the internet is limited and expensive.  Especially when in an area at the limit of a cell tower's capability to reach.  This has been our situation since arriving on St. Simons Island, GA in October of 2014 and then Chattahoochee Bend State Park in April of 2015, where we will remain through the spring of 2016.  Our cell phones and jetpack struggle to make a connection, frequently switching between two distant towers and dropping connections in the process.  On a good day with a steady connection we still may only get a data transmission rate of between one and two MB/s.  It's an okay rate but a small fraction of what one expects from a wired connection which runs around 100 MB/s.  We're not streaming any movies or watching cat videos on YouTube.  Not that we could anyway.  Our data is limited to 16 GB/month and it goes fast supporting our phones, two iPads, two Kindles and two computers.  The routine software and app updates alone can consume the whole data plan without ever opening a web page.  We have all our automatic update systems turned off and wait until we get to a WiFi connection, like at our daughter's.  It's quite the production when we make the hour and fifteen minute drive to see the grandbaby.  We carry out bags full of electronics, power supplies, multi-outlet surge protectors and extension cords.  Still, the data goes fast and we prioritize the things we do.  This blog has been low on the priority list and hence the infrequent and large gaps between postings.

The post before this one was uploaded in mid-January, it was about a day-trip we did in September.  I have spent the past year trying to get our adventures caught up and near real-time.  But instead the gap is getting worse.  We have arrived at the end of this billing cycle with a little data left in the bank and I am going to use it to do a "compressed" posting.  It will be abbreviated but it is covering from September 2015 to January 2016.

SEPTEMBER

Things at Chattahoochee Bend State Park have been pretty docile compared to our experiences in the Grand Canyon and Big Bend.  There had been virtually no drama since we arrived in April, but now in late September there is a little something worth writing about.

This park has two major campgrounds that have in-park campground hosts.  Cyndee and I are the hosts for the RV campground and the other host cares for the tent-only campground.  The tent campground host's duty had just ended days before and now Cyndee and I are caretakers for both campgrounds, filling the interim between the next host's arrival.  As luck would have it, the heat has broken and campers have turned out to enjoy weather that is just a little bit better than a sauna.

There were two campers in particular, actually one of them was a group of 32 sorority girls from the University of West Georgia that livened things up a little.  The other was a single guy, and he was seriously strange.  The first clue was that he had magnetic signs on the door of his vehicle that said "His Name for President", and he was not joking.  He seriously thought he was running for president.

There were other things he was doing that was raising warning flags but they were mostly just obnoxious, until that is, a round through the campground at about mid-morning.  Just as I was getting near the bathhouse a group of about eight sorority girls approached me and were obviously perturbed.

They told me that the guy had been talking loudly to himself and hollering in their direction saying; "Are you talking about me?  I know you're talking about me!".  But that wasn't the worst of it, in just the last few minutes he had walked up to their morning meeting and with all 32 of them standing there made a vulgar proposition.

Long story short, appropriate authorities were involved and this strange fellow was getting a three-sheriff escort out of the park, forbidden from ever returning.

The strange guy in shorts, the sorority girls in the background.
Park manager standing at a safe distance monitoring his progress vacating the premises.

OCTOBER

The holiday season is upon us.  Not only does this park not mind if we decorate for the holidays, they encourage it!

The hay bales were left over from a park function, everything else we acquired.
We'll leave the little scarecrows in the shed for whoever is here next year.

Another road trip, this time to Senoia (sah-noy-ya), home of the filming location for the massively popular TV series The Walking Dead.

Senoia is also home base to the Zac Brown Band.  Zac also has an operation just outside of town called Camp Southern Ground.  It's a large facility in the woods, a camp for kids of all abilities and has boys and girls living pavilions, an amphitheater, aquatics center and organic farm.

In Senoia there is the Southern Ground Social Club, a restaurant on one side and a bar on the other.  Our adventure in dining for the day was Southern Ground and it was a great adventure.  We would recommend this one to everyone.

Southern Ground restaurant is the store front with all the red.

 October saw the departure of the dozens of hummingbirds that visited our feeders daily as well as the songbirds at our seed feeders.  But in their place were some of the most gruesome orb weaver spiders I have ever seen.

These guys have lots of "texture" to them and they are quite aggressive.
They don't tolerate you touching their web, they will come after you.

While the spiders are wicked-scary looking, their webs are amazing.

 Not all birds left here to go to Mexico for the winter, an annual winter resident returned, a Bald Eagle.

Just cruising the Chattahoochee River.

I snagged this shot of the park's Bald Eagle as it was gliding over the boat launching ramp.  I've been stalking him/her ever since but have yet to catch it out of its nest which is high in a tree on the edge of the park property line.

We also had a falconry club do a public demonstration in October.  In addition to falcons, they brought hawks, vulchers and owls

NOVEMBER

And the rain just keeps coming.  It was a rainy spring and it was a rainy summer.  Everything is wet and the ground is saturated.  Then the rain took it up a notch in November and there was water just everywhere.  As much capacity as the Chattahoochee has, it finally succumbed to days and days of rain the first week of November.

More than half of the park's boat ramp is submerged

Normally, the river is not even visible from this position.  Before this day was over it submerged the swing.

The water eventually over-topped the ramp and flooded the day use area.

The river trail is in there somewhere, under six feet of water.
These trails have remained flooded, and closed into January and the river is rising again as I write (Jan 20, 2016)

Local residents looking for dry ground.  This is at the intersection to RV campground.

The Thanksgiving holiday saw the RV campground at near capacity.  Even all the rain didn't seem to put people off.  They showed up and made the best of the dry moments.

DECEMBER

Time to change the decorations.

Pumpkins and scarecrows replaced by Christmas Tree and a hapless reindeer tangled in lights.

Even the shed got a little sparkle for the holiday.

Surprisingly, the RV campground stayed fairly busy in December.  We were extra busy doing our volunteer duties and all the holiday activities.  Since we were in the same general location as our kids this year there was lots of shopping and visits to the grandbaby leading up to the holiday.

The kids endured our wish to have a traditional South Texas Christmas dinner of hot tamales.  We ordered four dozen from the Texas Tamale Warehouse.  It was a "displaced Texan survival kit".  They came to us packed in dry ice.  All we had to do was fire up the steamer for the tamales, cook some black beans and put out some hot tamale sauce.  Cyndee went one step further and put together her awesome recipe for guacamole.  We loved it, not sure the kids would consider this a new tradition.

Day Trip to Columbus, Georgia

It may be mid-September but we are still having peak summertime heat.  We have come to the realization that we are behaving the same as the people that are not coming to Chattahoochee Bend State Park.  There may be ample things to do and places to go in this part of Georgia but it is just too miserably hot to get out to do something.  We have just been going through the routine of camp host duties and trips to town for groceries, supplies, and the occasional ice cream.  Our favorite being a Blizzard from Dairy Queen.  Bad for the diet, good for the soul.

But cabin fever is setting in and we are determined to get out and do something, heat be damned.  Just by coincidence we were watching a local PBS station and they were doing the history of Columbus, Georgia with a focus on the development of the river that passes through the historic district.  It looked interesting and there was no rain forecast for the next day so we made plans to go.

The route we chose was all back-roads and took about an hour and a half.  This took us through some old towns that predated the Civil War such as Franklin (named after Benjamin Franklin, founded 1770) and LaGrange (incorporated in 1828).  Our destination, Columbus (named after Christopher Columbus), was also founded in 1828 and is Georgia's second largest city at a little over 200,000.

Columbus is situated at the beginning of the navigable portion of the Chattahoochee River and on the last stretch of the Federal Road before entering Alabama.  The plan for the city was drawn up by Dr. Edwin L. DeGraffenried, who placed the town on a bluff overlooking the river.  Across the river, where Phenix City, Alabama is now located, Creek Indians lived until their removal in 1836.

The river served as Columbus's connection to the world, particularly connecting plantations with the international cotton market via New Orleans and ultimately Liverpool, England.  The city's commercial importance increased in the 1850's with the arrival of the railroad.  In addition, textile mills began springing up along the river, bringing industry to an area reliant upon agriculture.  By 1860, the city was one of the more important industrial centers of the South, earning it the nickname "the Lowell of the South" in deference to the industrial textile mill town in Massachusetts which is also along a river.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the industries of Columbus expanded their production and Columbus became one of the most important centers of industry in the Confederacy.  During the war, Columbus ranked second to Richmond in the manufacture of supplies for the Confederate army.  In addition to textiles, the city had an iron works, a sword factory, and a shipyard for the Confederate Navy.

Columbus did not lie on Union General Sherman's march to the sea in which he burned and pillaged almost everything he came across, generally leaving only hospitals and churches standing.  Unaware of Lee's surrender to Grant and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Union and Confederates clashed in the Battle of Columbus, Georgia, on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, when a Union detachment attacked the city and burned many of the industrial buildings.  The inventor of Coca-Cola, Dr. John Stith Pemberton, was wounded in this battle.  A historic marker has been erected in Columbus marking the battle as the "Last Land Battle in the War from 1861 to 1865."

Reconstruction began almost immediately and prosperity followed.  Factories such as the Eagle and Phenix Mills were revived and the industrialization of the town led to rapid growth, so much so that it outgrew its original plan.  The Springer Opera House was built on 10th Street, attracting such notables as Oscar Wilde.  The Springer is now the official State Theater of Georgia.

By the time of the Spanish American War, the city saw much modernization.  Mayor Lucius Chappell also brought a training camp for soldiers to the area.  This training camp named Camp Benning would grow into present-day Fort Benning, named for General Henry L. Benning, a native of the city.

Like most textile operations in North America, there was a severe decline in the industry and so declined their facilities and the communities that relied on them.  But Columbus is having another revival of sorts.  In the 2000's expansion and historic preservation continued throughout the city.  Building on work done in the '90's such as the 1996 Olympic Softball complex, the South Commons area added Memorial Stadium, Golden Park, Columbus Civic Center and the recently added Hatcher Skateboard Park.  The old Eagle and Phenix Mill, abandoned and decaying, is under restoration and re-purposing into a high-end condominium complex.

This building is right downtown and perched on the edge of the river, adjacent to a class 4 rapid.  I think this is going to be a very sought after place to live.

Eagle Phenix Mills as seen from the Chattahoochee River

But what got our interest was the wold's longest urban whitewater rafting venue.  A dam that used to serve the purposes of the mill was dynamited and once again the Chattahoochee was free to flow as it did before the hand of man intervened.  But the city of Columbus did more than just remove the dam, they reconstructed the river bottom with an eye to creating a whitewater rafter's dream.  And by all measure they were successful.  Between the river and other attractions, Columbus drew 1.8 million visitors in 2015.

View of the river from the "back porch" of Eagle Phenix Mills.

Unrestricted flow of the "Hooch" through the heart of Columbus, GA.

As is our usual we searched for an adventure in dining.  Today's adventure found us at Country's BBQ on Broad.  A fifties style diner built in an old art deco era Greyhound bus station.  One of the dining areas is even a 1940's Flex bus.

Country's BBQ on Broad.  The bus is attached to the building and an overflow dining area.

The food was good, both of us got BBQ, the plate was served classic southern style with a square of cornbread on the side.  We'd go here again but Columbus has so many potential adventures it could take awhile to get back around to them.

The heat limited the time outside.  We walked along their river walk for just a short distance and ducked into their (really nice) visitor center a couple of times to cool off and use the "facilities".  It would be nice to come back and spend more time exploring when the weather is milder.