Weekend Wandering

askHad a nice weekend. I got jack done at home of the things I should have done, but sometimes that’s better.

Saturday I slept until noon… yes… noon. And then I napped some more. I did finish painting the trim on the stairs that night but that’s all I accomplished for the entire weekend. I didn’t even put the hardware back on the doors in the hall, pick up the paint paper or clean the carpet so that I can move stuff back into the hall. So, very little accomplished.

But Sunday I got up with the chickens. I had no clear plans other than get in the car and drive. I used to do that in grad school but the goal was usually to visit some town or city or place where my family had sprung from (Auburn was very close to these places). Lots of small family cemeteries were visited in those years.

So, I woke up and I did a quick google trying to find some roadside attraction to visit. I had in mind going north on I-75 into the more rugged terrain. Oddly enough they were even talking to someone on the radio about an attraction up close to where I lived the first 6 mos of my life. But there was a chance of rain coming from the west, so I decided to head east. That was after I was in the car.

I found myself heading towards Augusta. I thought for awhile of taking in some of Greene County. I had ancestors there at the end of the 18th century, but I have no idea of the exact area they lived in. The area is beautiful but about to be built over because of Lake Oconee. I meandered through Greensboro’s small but old cemetery and saw not one family name. So, either not the town we were from or we left no evidence behind, not even the family names.

I headed back to the interestate and continued West. The sun started to poke out intermittently from the clouds. Yaayyy!!

And I saw a roadsign for historic Crawfordville.. hmmm.. The name seemed to ring a bell, but I’ve no idea why. So, I wandered off the interstate again. The only claim to fame for the small burg seems to be that it was the home of Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy. The main street was kept up enough, but all one had to do was drive on the back streets to see this town has been dying a long slow death. I got some nice pics back there. Such as:

From there, I wandered the back roads to a very quaint town in Wilkes County called Washington. Quite old but just beautiful. I bit in later spring it will be a show-stopper. Seemed far away from any major city so not sure how it’s holding on but it seems to be. Though they had several museums, main claim to fame seems to be Robert Toombs, a former Georgia politician who saw service during the civil war. I have to admit, I’ve only heard about him because he’s a cousin to one of my great, great… grandmothers. One of the few family kinships to famous southerners that I know isn’t made up.

At this point, despite the clouds, there was enough breaks that there was a consistent bath of the sun’s rays. ahhhhh…

Leaving Washington, I stopped for some fast food and hit the interestate and headed on to Augusta. I didn’t have a load of time there having spent so much wandering the rural byways, but I was half an hour out at this point, so it seemed a waste not to at least see the city. I was surprised by how much I liked it. I felt a fast kinship to the place. It has some history being one fo the older Georgia cities. And it’s a decent but not oppresive size. I wandered on the Savannah River walk and crossed the bridge on foot into South Carolina to take some shots of the Georgia side.

Afterwards, I spent a couple of hours wandering through Magnolia Cemetery, Augusta’s old main burial ground. Very beautiful and interesting. Some of the graves had green Ribbons on them from St. Patty’s day and sure enough if you read the stones, the deceased was born in Ireland. It appears that there were a lof ot Irish in Augusta, which maybe explains why all the fountains on Sunday were still spewing green-tinted water from Friday’s celebrations.

I also noticed that the cemetery isn’t in the best neighborhood. I wasn’t scare there in daylight, but youc ould tell it was a poorer area. And parts of the cemtery wall had barbed wire added to aid in its defence. Now, the funny thing is years ago my Dad taught me that you can tell by the barbed wire direction whether the installers were trying to keep people in or out of an enclosure. The barbed wire at Magnolia Cemetery is aimed INWARDS…. So, who are they trying to keep IN the cemetery anyway?

Got home about 7pm, so all in all, 12 hours spent on the road. I was tired, but a happy kind of tired for a change. I’ll have to do these treks more often, especially as nicer weather is on the horizon.