We stayed in Plains for another day so that Brandi could see a doctor about a bad case of poison ivy on her legs that just won't seem to go away. She woke me up the other night begging me to amputate her legs. I told her that I wouldn't be able to do that. We both had a pretty bad case of it last week. Mine responded to a course of prednisone, but Brandi's continues to linger on. The doctor gave her a shot yesterday, and we are praying that this will finally be the end of it. Unfortunately the poison ivy is everywhere this time of year in this part of Georgia. We see it every time we leave the road to take a break, eat lunch, or to find a place to set up our tent for the night.
Boze and Betty have been so kind to us this past week. They let us stay in their home, fed us extremely well, let us use their car, brought home all kinds of stuff from the pharmacy for our poison ivy, and today they gave us a cel phone to use for the remainder of our walk through Georgia. Very, very kind.
Saturday, April 27, 2002: Buena Vista, GA
We packed up this morning and started walking towards a town called Buena Vista (pronounced "B-you-nah" Vista in these parts.) About halfway between Friendship Camp and the town of Buena Vista, there was a little dot on the map called Draneville. I wasn't expecting to find any businesses in Draneville. Most of the time the little dots that size are just what they call, "a wide spot in the road," usually consisting of a country church and a few houses. Furthermore, the name "Draneville" doesn't evoke any grand expectations of anything urban. But, as the weather started heating up by mid-morning, I began to hope for a store that would sell us fountain sodas with ice, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a convenience store in the distance when we rounded the corner into Draneville.
Well, we said goodbye to Boze and Betty at their pharmacy today and walked north out of Plains. Our destination was a place called Friendship Camp, where we arrived this evening. We've knocked on all the doors we can find at Friendship Camp, and no one seems to be here. It's a very nice place. Boze and Betty told us that it would be okay for us to stay here tonight, so we have decided to stay.
Walking north out of Plains
Angie at the Draneville Store
Camping in the pea-can trees near Buna Vista
A woman named Angie, who was working at the Draneville Store, invited us inside to cool off in the air-conditioning for a while. So, we gratefully sat down at one of those country store tables where the locals gather for coffee and ended up spending a couple of hours there, talking with Angie and meeting a few of the local farmers who stopped by the store on break from "putting peanuts in the ground."
Although we have heard that the federal government will pay seventy dollars an acre to any peanut farmer who doesn't plant this year, we have seen quite a few farmers out preparing their fields and planting peanuts. The reason for the government subsidy is drought. They're trying to protect the already suffering levels of ground water from the past three years of drought, and peanuts supposedly take a lot of irrigation. I decided not to ask any of the farmers about their reasons for planting. I'm fairly certain that it's a touchy subject around here, and I didn't want to offend anyone.
FDR's Little White House
Joe and Jerry at First Baptist Church
Haile checking on the robust redhorse eggs
In addition to giving us the scoop on what it's like to live in Buena Vista, Angie also told us about a campground outside of Buena Vista, and that is where we are camping tonight. Actually, we are camping in back of the campground in a rather large pecan grove (pronounced "pea-can" grove in these parts.) The owners of the campground have offered to take us to church with them tomorrow morning. We are going to join them for church, but then we're planning to walk this Sunday instead of taking our usual day of rest. Our plan has been to get into the Appalachians before summer hits, but it feels like summer has already hit here in Georgia. All we can do is press on in a northernly direction and hope that it gets better.
Wednesday, May 1, 2002: Warm Springs, GA
We continued walking north the past four days and reached the town of Warm Springs this afternoon. Although it feels like we've made it to Appalachians, I can tell from the topo maps that we still have a couple hundred miles before we are really walking in the mountains. This area has just been blessed with a small outcrop of hills-- the southernmost evidence of the upcoming Appalachian range.
The look of the land has changed several times in the past week on our walk from Plains to Warm Springs. Back in Plains, the scenery consisted of a 50/50 mix of red-dirt peanut fields and acres of pine tree forest in neatly planted rows. They grow pine trees like row crops on much of the land we have walked in Georgia. We've really appreciated the fields of pine, and we use them all the time for rest stops throughout the day and for camping at night. Between Buena Vista and Manchester, we started seeing more pastureland, cows, and a few hills, but still amidst the fields of pine. Now, like I've said, it feels like we are walking in the mountains. Our walk this morning on the back roads between Manchester and Warm Springs had potential for some breathtaking views. Unfortunately it was extremely dreary and foggy this morning, and so the potential breathtaking views were robbed by poor visibility.
Our first stop in Warm Springs today was Roosevelt's Little White House. At the sight of several school busses in the parking lot and a sign indicating that there would be a five-dollar admission charge, I was considering skipping our "Little White House experience." Last week we were visiting the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in the restored Plains High School, when about five school busses full of screaming kids piled in and caused us to bale out. I've had a certain phobia associated with school busses parked in front of tourist attractions ever since. However, the director of the historic site kindly told me that we wouldn't have to pay an admission charge since I had walked to the Little White house from the coast of Oregon, and so we decided to go on inside to have look around.
The Little White House was FDR's vacation home, built back in 1932, and now it's a state historic site and open for tours. The site also has a small museum and the token "short informative film" with plenty of historical footage of FDR. Roosevelt suffered from polio, and he built his vacation home in Warm Springs so that he could soak in the spring-fed pools that were popular here back in those days. I began to look forward to catching a bath in one of those sping-fed pools, but later found out that the pools are not available for public soaking anymore.
After our visit to the Little White House and a walk through Warm Springs, we walked about a half-mile out of town to see the National Fish Hatchery. A man named Haile, who lives and works here at the hatchery, offered to let us camp next to his house, and we gratefully accepted. Haile had some more work to do around the hatchery, so we left our packs in his garage and set out on a tour of Warm Springs without the heavy loads.
Warm Springs is a rather quaint, little, mountain, tourist town. They boast of sixty-three shops in their quaint, little downtown. We looked around a couple of them, but shopping for gee-gaws and nick-nacks while in the middle of a walk across America always seems like a senseless activity.
On our way back out to the hatchery, we passed by First Baptist Church and saw several cars in the parking lot. We immediately realized that it was Wednesday, and decided to go inside to see if they were having Wednesday night services. Unfortunately, they were having a business meeting this Wednesday. Fortunately, they were having a chicken dinner before the business meeting and invited us in to join them.
Thursday, May 2, 2002: near Woodbury, GA
Haile gave us a special tour of the National Fish Hatchery this morning. One of the many projects the folks at the hatchery are currently working on is the reintroduction of the robust red-horse sucker, which was thought to be extinct for the past twenty years. They've found a few of them recently in Georgia and are nurturing the eggs to ensure that as many survive as possible.
We had walked past Mac's Bar-B-Q several times during our short stay in Warm Springs. It seemed like every time that we did, one of us would mention how good it smelled. Today on our way out of town, we knew it would be the last time we past Mac's, and so we stopped for lunch. The owner (Mac, of course) had seen us walking by with our packs and asked us what we were doing. When I got to the part about the website, he said, "Well, if you put a picture of Mac's BBQ on your website, then lunch is on us." Thanks Mac. The BBQ was excellent!
We stayed in Plains for another day so that Brandi could see a doctor about a bad case of poison ivy on her legs that just won't seem to go away. She woke me up the other night begging me to amputate her legs. I told her that I wouldn't be able to do that. We both had a pretty bad case of it last week. Mine responded to a course of prednisone, but Brandi's continues to linger on. The doctor gave her a shot yesterday, and we are praying that this will finally be the end of it. Unfortunately the poison ivy is everywhere this time of year in this part of Georgia. We see it every time we leave the road to take a break, eat lunch, or to find a place to set up our tent for the night.
