Robert picked me up at work in Macon midafternoon on Friday. We drove to the Georgia Welcome Center in Plains, the meeting point for the ride. As we approached Sumter County, we drove through one of the hardest rains we’ve seen in a quite a while. In fact, traffic started backing up on the state highway we were on, probably because of flooding or downed trees or power lines. We used our GPS to reroute via county roads. When we arrived at the welcome center, the bottom was still falling out.
Fortunately, I had my river shoes with me, and so I waded through the flooding parking lot to the registration table inside, covering myself with a towel. Without drowning, we managed to load our bikes and bags into the transport truck and board the bus chartered to take us to Florence Marina State Park.
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| Charter bus as viewed through our car windshield |
Once we were settled inside the bus, we enjoyed a boxed supper provided by the Friends of Jimmy Carter. I’m always up for a good, homemade pimento cheese sandwich! Also, I would have been disappointed if we hadn’t gotten any peanuts:
As if we didn’t already have enough deliciousness, our ride organizers provided a keg of locally brewed craft beer. Yes, there is some really good beer produced in rural southwest Georgia! It’s from the Omaha Brewing Company in Omaha, Georgia, which is close to Florence Marina. Friday night’s selection was the seasonal Doc Dweller, a German-style Berliner Weisse with a satisfying tartness. Ja, gut!
The rain stopped as we headed west to Florence Marina.
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| Red at night, sailor's delight |
Florence Marina is a hidden gem. I wish we had had time to enjoy more of the amenities, ranging from boating to fishing to miniature golf. Some people in our group camped, while the rest of us stayed in cottages. Robert’s and my cottage was quite comfortable. I’m always amazed that more people don’t take advantage of the terrific facilities offered at our state parks.
Robert set his phone alarm for 6:30 AM to give us plenty of time before our 8:30 AM ride start the next morning. I awoke at 7:08, somewhat panicking because the alarm hadn’t gone off. It turns out that our cell phones were picking up a signal across the Chattahoochee River from a cell tower in the Central Time Zone! Fortunately, we still had plenty of time to get ready before the ride.
After a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy (thank you, Friends of Florence Marina!), everyone gathered in the parking lot by the clubhouse. Living in Middle Georgia, I always get excited when I travel south and get to see Spanish moss. How prototypically Southern it is draping over a crape myrtle:
The group headed out at 8:30 A.M. Our first stop was about 10 miles away at Providence Canyon State Park:
We didn’t have time on this trip to hike the canyon, but Robert and I did so several years ago when we visited it for our anniversary. Providence Canyon is an incredibly beautiful formation that actually shouldn’t exist. That’s because it was formed by poor farming practices in the first part of the twentieth century.
Following rest stops in Lumpkin and Richland, we headed back toward Plains. A few miles outside of town, we stopped at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in the community of Archery. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting this site and getting a sense of how formative President Carter’s childhood was in shaping his future path. Life focused around family and the farm. Young Jimmy had numerous farm chores, helped run the family’s commissary, and played outdoors with his friends. He went into the town of Plains for school, church, and commerce. The Carters had a hard but good life during the Great Depression. As President Carter put it, “The early years of my life on the farm were full and enjoyable, isolated but not lonely. We always had enough to eat, no economic hardship, but no money to waste. We felt close to nature, close to members of our family, and close to God.”
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| The Carters' farmhouse |
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| The clay tennis courts where Jimmy Carter played. He and his father Earl were both avid tennis players. Notice the windmill in the background. Although it’s not the original windmill, it’s a replica, which was state-of-the-art for its time. It brought running water to the Carters’ house for the first time in 1935. |
Jack and Rachel Clark were the Carters’ closest neighbors. They were day laborers who were provided a place to live and earned a salary in exchange for their work. Mr. Clark took care of the farm animals and vegetable garden. Mrs. Clark picked crops and helped care for the Carter children, often keeping them when parents Earl and Lillian were away from home. She also taught young Jimmy about the plants and animals around them, and she showed him how to fish.
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| Jack and Rachel Clark’s home. I took it from this angle because it shows some yard brooms. I was intrigued because I had always heard about dirt yards and the brush brooms that were used to sweep them clean. This helped keep insects and snakes out of the house. |
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| Then-Governor Carter in 1970, the year I was born. I’ve always been proud that he and I have the same birthday, October 1. |
Seeing President Carter’s boyhood home definitely helped me understand why such issues as economic fairness, racial justice, and environmental stewardship have been important to President Carter both in the White House and through his work at the Carter Center.
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| President Carter’s handprints, placed in this walkway in 2010 |
Next, Robert and I rode the last few miles into Plains. It was so heartening to see all these signs from well-wishers all along the street in front of President and Mrs. Carter’s current home:
We finished the day’s ride at Plains High School/Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, which was also our lunch stop. This historical site focuses on Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s humanitarian work since his presidency. We didn’t have much time to go through the displays (good reason for a return trip) because I also wanted to visit the presidential campaign headquarters at the train depot. But first, we had an important quest – peanut ice cream!
Robert and I rode our bicycles the couple of blocks to Main Street. He was jonesing for some java, and so our first stop was at Buffalo Café. Lo and behold, there was our friend Rexanne! She’s from Macon, and she was having lunch with a friend from Florida. How amazing that they picked Plains as their meeting point and were there at the same time as Robert and I!
After Robert got his coffee fix, we strolled a few doors down to the ice cream store. There were several outstanding photo ops along the way:
Then we got the good stuff. I'm actually not a huge ice cream fan, but this was mighty fine.
We made one more store stop at the Plains Trading Post. It’s the largest retailer of political memorabilia in the Southeast. It’s not just Democratic, either. It’s has just as many Republican items. Also, there is pro and con merchandise for both parties – quite entertaining. I especially enjoyed seeing these real (empty) cans of Billy Beer, which was produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The first time I visited Plains was sometime around 1980. It was during spring break as my family was driving to Florida. We were purposely going off the beaten path and didn’t even have a particular beach destination in mind. We stopped at Billy Carter’s service station, where my parents had some Billy Beer. He wasn’t there that day, but if I remember correctly, it happened to be his birthday.
Robert and I then headed over to the train depot:
As I looked at all of the displays, I could remember what it was like during the Carter presidency. The 1976 election was the first one that I remember.
One thing at campaign headquarters that tickled me was a video of Rosalynn Carter responding to a reporter’s question. The reporter asked if she and her husband would be able to handle the intense scrutiny that comes with being President and First Lady. She responded that they are from a small town and are used to everyone knowing their business. Ha ha – truth!
Then, it was time to board the SAM Shortline! The SAM Shortline is an excursion train that runs between Crisp County and Sumter County. Its name comes from its original route, which ran from Savannah to Americus to Montgomery, and from the line’s 19th century founder Samuel Hugh Hawkins. I’ve wanted to ride the SAM Shortline for a number of years, and I was so excited when the Find Your Park Ride offered me the chance. The SAM Shortline is actually a rolling park – how cool!
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| I wish there had been a “warts” after the “hog.” |
Our group had a car to ourselves to make it easier to transport our bicycles. We removed our front wheels and placed our bikes on the seats around us. They enjoyed the ride, too:
The festiveness of the train increased even more with another keg from Omaha Brewing Company. This time it was Nada-Banana, a German-style Weissbier with flavors of banana, vanilla, cloves, and other spices. I’m sort of funny about banana flavored things, but I loved this, especially since I’m a big fan of the yeastiness of Weissbiers.
We crossed Lake Blackshear as we approached our destination, Georgia Veterans State Park. Dozens of mayflies were flying around, and many alighted on our train window:
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| Good fishing bait |
At the registration desk at Georgia Veterans, the check-in form asked for the make and model of my vehicle. For kicks, I wrote “Marin Stelvio.” None the wiser, the receptionist gave me a parking pass, which I hung on my bicycle:
They estimated that it would be about 9:00 PM before I had my bag. Robert kindly offered to let me wear some of his clean clothes. I took a shower and put on his shorts, T-shirt, and shoes. Everything was too big for me, particularly his shorts, which hung down to my knees. Even his belt didn’t help. So, I went for the gangsta look:
At least I can be thankful that I’m not married to a linebacker.
Eventually, I did get my bag. (Thank you, Julio, Mia, and George!) In the meantime, Robert and I had a relaxing evening. We walked to dinner at the Cypress Grill (a restaurant within the park) and also had some time to read.
The next morning, everyone gathered for breakfast at one of the park pavilions. Then, we rolled out a little before 8:30. During the first few miles, we rode past some particularly beautiful pecan orchards:
Then, it started to rain. I’ve ridden in plenty of rain, and so I really didn’t mind. It let up before we got to our next stop, Andersonville National Historic Site (NHS). Camp Sumter at Andersonville was one of the largest Confederate military prisons during the Civil War. More than 45,000 Union soldiers were confined here, and almost 13,000 of them died while in prison. Today, most of the prison area consists of grassy fields, but there are also a number of relics and historical markers. One corner contains stone monuments in memory of each Northern state’s prisoners. The soldiers from a particular state tended to stay together within the guarded area. The location of each monument marks where that state’s soldiers dwelled.
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| Wisconsin memorial |
The Andersonville NHS also contains Andersonville National Cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum. We spent some time going through the POW museum. One thing I learned is that a person who is captured by enemy forces must be military personnel to be considered a POW. This may seem obvious, but it’s an important distinction. For example, most of the captives in the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-1981 were not members of the military and, therefore, were not classified as POWs.
One striking part of the POW museum is an exhibit that takes you through the experience of becoming a POW. It starts with a wall from which dozens of gun barrels are pointed at you. The museum keeps a good balance of depicting the realities of war and being a POW without being too graphic. Because I was wet from the earlier rain, I got very cold as I walked through air-conditioned museum. That seemed incredibly trivial as I considered the subject matter of the museum.
Our group had lunch at some picnic tables at the Andersonville NHS. Throughout the weekend, various National Park Service rangers assisted us by loading gear, setting out meals, and just generally being friendly and helpful. At Andersonville NHS they even had a raffle for us. Each rider received a raffle ticket with his/her boxed lunch. We had to go back by the gift shop at the POW museum to see if we won. I did! I received a water bottle and T-shirt, a nice memento of the weekend.
We had one more stop on our tour, Bison Valley Lodge. This is a lovely event facility located near Americus. The main attraction, however, is the bison themselves:
Note the shallow depression that the bison have made. They like to wallow in such depressions, but scientists aren’t completely sure why. Possible explanations are grooming, social behavior for group cohesion, playing, relief from insects and ticks, and cooling.
It was just a few more miles back to the Georgia Welcome Center in Plains and the end of our wonderful weekend. Now that I’ve found my park by bicycle, I need to explore some of the other 99 Ways to Find Your Park:
http://findyourpark.com/news/99-ways-to-find-your-park
awesome. May have to do the full weekend next year
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