Georgia

I have a bit of a soft spot for Waffle Houses.  When I was working in West Virginia, a coworker was all excited because they were opening a Waffle House in town.  He drummed up enthusiasm, and on opening day a bunch of us from work went to the tiny new Waffle House for lunch.  My feelings for the place are for the event, not the food. We noticed a Waffle House near our motel south of Atlanta.  A bit tired of motel breakfasts, we treated ourselves to a Waffle House breakfast.  It brought back good memories.

Our first charge was in Macon.  We walked down the street for coffee.  Macon looks like it is doing what it can to keep its pretty downtown.  Several of the old buildings are waiting for developers and tenants.

Learning the lesson of the day before, we wanted lunch around noon.  Macon was too early and Savannah would be too late, so we stopped in the little town of Dublin.  There didn’t seem to be anything other than fast food.  We chose Zaxby’s (chicken).  That might be a once-in-a-lifetime visit.

The Savannah charger is at the airport.  We met a fellow from New Jersey on his way to Florida and a couple from Florida on their way to Hilton Head.  The terminal is small and offers little — the gelato place has closed — so we just sat and worked on the crossword.

We got to Savannah around 4.  Andrea checked us onto a tour of the city while I put our luggage in the room.  The tour was interesting, giving us a good overview, but I was still wound up from the day.  We had supper along River Street, in one of the old cotton factor’s buildings.  We got back to the motel after 7.  I started the process of doing the laundry.  The clothes didn’t dry completely on the first go-round in the dryer, but I was too tired to care.  We draped the damp ones around the room and crawled into bed.

Morning dawned beautifully.  The clothes were dry and we were rested.  We toured on the trolley again, hopping off at a coffee shop, then touring one of the old houses.  We wandered through some of the beautiful squares and stumbled on a delicious lunch — the best food I’d had since Mobile.

(I was fascinated by the oak trees and took lots of pictures of them.  But it turns out I didn’t take many other pictures.  And a lot of the oak tree pictures look the same.)

We wandered around a bit more, had dessert in late afternoon, and then found a place to have an early supper — the Treylor Park.  This was a bit like Portland food — odd and good.  I got the grilled apple pie sandwich — delicious.  Andrea’s fried bologna sandwich was some odd combination too, but she was less taken with hers than I was with mine.

Sunday morning we drove back out to the airport to top off our charge — we would be going across the back country against the advice of the navigation system and were a bit anxious.  It was a pleasant drive but not particularly scenic.  There were a lot of tall, skinny pine trees, some in rows like a farm and others helter skelter.

We made it to the charger in Tifton with plenty of reserve.  Lunch, and then south on some more back roads.  When we finally got on the interstate and got closer to Florida, we were assaulted by an almost continuous stream of tourism billboards.  It seemed we were entering a different land.

Sunday, April 10, 2016