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Published: December 6th 2007
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Posted by Onaxthiel: It's been a while since I last posted, and I needed a break after the last two days of driving. Since we found out about the chance to see a shuttle launch, we decided that driving across half the south would be a good idea. It is kind of a twenty first century march to the sea, but with much less killing and a bit less burning. Particularly since the south east of the US is in a sever drought right now and the state parks think that one spark from a camp fire will cause their entire state to explode like a car load of villainous mooks in a Hollywood action flick. There really isn't a good reason to disallow burning at Stone Mountain State Park in North Carolina. They disallow burning as a show of solidarity with the parts of the states that ARE in a drought. What a stupid idea!
Enough editorializing. For now. I always come back to it in the end. Stone Mountain is an imposing looking rock protrusion that caps a hilly area around it. With a two mile hike to the summit, and needing to move south quickly, we decided
to take the shorter walk out to the scenic view of the cliff face and see the historic cabin once inhabited by four generations of mountain folk. The log cabin that the family lived in was a complex looking structure considering the simplicity of its construction. An expansion was added by the third generation that effectively doubled the size of the cabin, and the sign notes that the building shows architectural influences from both Scotland and Germany. I am somewhat skeptical that log cabin construction shows genealogy quite so clearly, especially when the family that built the shelter in the first place told the park service this much of their family history themselves, I am certainly not an architecture expert though, so perhaps logs piled on top of each other have more details than I give them credit for. In season the whole site and all the buildings are open for viewing. Being there in early December, we were deprived of the chance to see the internal arraignment of the collection of buildings by the simple expedient of padlocks. The other structures on site consisted of the springbox, where water was gathered from a source that would make most one
dollar per bottle of water urbanites jealous, a blacksmiths shop, a barn, and lastly a shucking pen, where (according to the sign) everyone would gather from miles around to shuck all day. Once we finished with this walk around, we headed back to the car and onto the highway to lay down 300 miles of tracks.
The only breaks in the run before Savannah were gas stops. In Columbia, SC my car was chosen by a dude selling a car cleaning spray for a demo of his product. I suppose it was the most filthy thing that was parked there at that moment. I told him I wasn't interested, but he proceeded to make a few clean spots on my car's otherwise unblemished layers of protective grime. I then reminded him I was uninterested in buying his product, but he did make some sales to the people that had to gathered to watch him scrub while I pumped gas. I wonder how long those marring points of cleanliness will stay?
In Savannah, we met up with some of my old army buddies. Most of the medics were out of town training, but I found one of my
oldest buddies, and also one of the guys from my company that worked in the S shops. Obfuscator and I wandered the streets of Savannah between meals with these fine gentlemen and we saw some of my old haunts and witnessed how quiet the downtown of a tourist mecca can be on a Tuesday night in the off season. The night ended watching an Irish music performer at Kevin Barry's, my favorite local IRA bar. Savannah is slightly more Irish than Boston, and the people there never really noticed that the IRA stopped being a group of rebels standing toe to toe with British regulars and started putting bombs all over the UK. The bar still retains my loyalty because of the hall of heroes they keep upstairs, honoring veterans of all the our armed forces, police officers and fire fighters. Combined with being able to hear live Irish music almost every night, It remains about my favorite night spot in town. Particularly since the city condemned my second favorite location as structurally unsound after the city dug a massive pit next to their establishment.
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