My road trip is winding down as I meander north back towards Michigan. I’ve covered a lot of ground since my wedding anniversary post from North Carolina. These will be my final thoughts for now to wrap up the experience. Tomorrow I will arrive home and spend the rest of the weekend doing laundry and cleaning out the camper. Then I’ll start planning my next trip!

The Road Taken

After leaving Carolina Beach I spent the next two weeks following my nose thusly:

• I first wound my way down the North and South Carolina coastal lowlands into Georgia, where I stopped briefly to explore Savannah and Tybee Island. Need to return to do Savannah justice, not enough time! Tybee Island was great, but I was staying at the most crowded campground I have ever seen, so my experience was within that context. I literally could step out of my camper and reach out to touch the one next to me, and in front of me, and on the other side of me… you get the idea. It was not pleasant and I only stayed one night instead of the two I had planned. To save money (and avoid sleeping in a Walmart parking lot) I got the cheapest hotel I could find, which also turned out to be a big mistake. I knew I was in trouble when I drove onto the property and saw the pool filled in with dirt and grass growing out of it. The whole experience went downhill from there, but thankfully I did not catch any disease and was only there one night.

• On my way to Florida I continued to hug the coastline and visited a former rice plantation, the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation State Historic Site. While there, I fell in love (again) with the live oak trees that I first saw in Alabama last fall. They continue to amaze me with their huge trunks and vast branches reaching up into the sky and then snaking down along the ground, sometimes forming new root systems from the low-lying branches. Standing firm, they offer a backdrop of dignity and magnificence wherever they are, and serve as detached witnesses to the events and people that have passed by them over the last several hundred years.

• Following the coastal lowland tidewaters I dipped down into Florida where I had a fun meet-up with my camping buddy Kim who was visiting her brother in Neptune Beach just outside Jacksonville. She invited me to overlap for a night at his place, and he and his wife graciously agreed to put me up. (Thank you!!)

• Before leaving Florida the next morning I dipped slightly further south to take a quick walk-about in St. Augustine, then headed back north into southern Georgia, where I had my blissful couple of days at Koinonia Farm. So inspiring and interesting that I had to write a separate article about that experience.

• After the time of fellowship and renewal at Koinonia Farm, I wasn’t quite ready to leave Georgia, so meandered on the small roads for an extra day in that state, taking in Plains (where President Jimmy Carter is from), Americus (beautiful, cute town and home to Habitat for Humanity), Andersonville (site of the Confederate prison camp, which was really a death camp - I spent a couple of hours here, very sobering), and Warm Springs (where Franklin Roosevelt found some relief from his polio symptoms and also had his “Little White House” as a retreat. He also died in that house). Lots of history to learn and think about and absorb.

• Looking at my calendar I decided that I did not want to be driving on Easter Sunday so made some adjustments to be back by Saturday the 30th. That meant three days of driving in order to keep things manageable and interesting (i.e. opportunities to spend time exploring if desired). So my last days looked like this:

  • Thursday, March 28 - Warm Springs, Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Small roads all day. Not a bad drive so I was able to detour and see Cloudland Canyon, which I didn’t know existed until one of the Koinonia members suggested checking it out. I stayed in a brewery parking lot in Chattanooga, which was great because they were very dog friendly and even had a small dog park on the premises. Beer wasn’t bad either.

  • Friday, March 29 - Chattanooga, Tennessee to Lexington, Kentucky. I had planned to use the interstate to get to the destination as soon as possible, then have the rest of the day for rest and relaxation and writing and exploring. But that was not to be. People were on the move this Good Friday, and the drive through Tennessee on I75 was miserably crowded. At one point I thought maybe taking the smaller roads would be faster, but lots of other people had the same idea and it was grueling to try to get anywhere on the byways. I kept hopping on and off the interstate and finally got to Lexington hours after I had intended. The overnight plan was to stay in the parking lot of a hard cider distiller, but when I arrived I discovered that I was in the middle of the Distillery District of Lexington. The parking lot I was in served all the surrounding distilleries and the whole area was hopping. The parking lot was full, and there were people everywhere. Normally it would have been a great hangout for an afternoon and evening, but I wasn’t really in the mood and could see I was going to get no privacy at all in the huge parking lot where people would be coming and going late into the evening. So I bailed and opted for a nice hotel not far out of the city, but not before I did several tastings at several distilleries and loaded up with as many bottles of moonshine, vodka, bourbon and whiskey as I could carry and still manage Sadie who was with me. I may have overdone it a bit, but hey, I’m in Kentucky! And it will last forever! Maybe…

  • Saturday, March 30 - Lexington to Ann Arbor. Tomorrow I plan to hit the road early and try to get ahead of the rest of the weekend travelers who are trying to reach their loved ones before the Sunday holiday.

Reflections and Thoughts From the Trip

Spring Beauty

I drove south in search of spring, and found it! The floral displays were breathtaking in their splendor as I drove around. The wisteria is particularly stunning. It grows wild in the forests and alongside the roadways, and seems to be everywhere. It is the type of plant that goes completely unnoticed except for the small window when it blooms in the early spring. Otherwise it just blends in with the other green foliage that it clings to. What a joy that I was able to see the full display during my travels, especially in Georgia. Had I come at any other time of year I would have totally missed the magic.

My father always loved redbud and we usually had some small, ornamental ones planted somewhere around our various houses we lived in. But the wild redbud display I witnessed on this trip was on a whole other level. Like the wisteria, it has a relatively small window of bloom, and the rest of the year the trees just blend in with the other foliage in woodlands that line the roadways. But today while I was driving through the Smoky Mountains, I could look off in the distance and see a sort of purplish/pinkish hue on the mountainsides. Up close by the roadways they were big, densely grouped, and in full blossom. Carpets of bright purple (I don’t know why they call them redbuds because they are definitely a purple color) everywhere I looked. I wanted to photograph the effect along the road, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do so at 70 mph. Couldn’t do it on the smaller roads when I was going slower because those roads tended to be very curvy, requiring both hands on the wheel (tightly clenched) and both eyes glued on the road at all times.

I will not be here to enjoy the full season of the dogwood, but I can tell that they are going to pop in just another day or so. There are other flowering blossoms on trees that I couldn’t identify, and I just missed most of the azaleas, which were on full display before I got here. All in all, I found the warmer temperatures and color that I was looking for, and it was joyful and inspiring to be in the middle of it for a few weeks. Only a couple of days of rain, and even that did not dampen (pun intended) my spirits or the overall experience of the trip. The deciduous trees are still bare in most places, but the verdant light early spring green is beginning to make its presence known more and more everyday.

The Mid-Atlantic Coast

My experience in the coastal lowlands and tidewaters of the deep south has been new territory for me. Although my family took a camping trip to Florida when I was a teen, I really don’t remember more than a few snapshots of where we went. Certain places had a familiar ring to them (Fort Pulaski, Jekyll Island, Koinonia Farm, St. Augustine), but I couldn’t remember anything about actually being in any of those places, and certainly not during the drives in between them. So this trip felt like the first time I was trying to see and appreciate where I was in every moment of the trip.

Being in the coastal areas in early March makes a big difference to the experience. I can only imagine what it is like in the heat of the summer with the mosquitos and other bugs that thrive in hot, moist, climates. My brother Daniel and I had a small taste of buggy conditions at the South Carolina campsite where we stayed, and we had to retire early to our respective quarters because we couldn’t control the tiny gnats that were biting us in swarms as we tried to sit and visit. But mostly the nights were cool and the days were warm but not hot so bugs were not a big factor for me. I was a little worried when Sadie tried to catch the big southern carpenter bees (bigger than bumble bees) that were often flying about in some of the places we stayed. She would chase them and jump in the air trying to catch them. They seemed as big as her nose and I was worried that she would get stung if she caught one, but fortunately, she never did. Whew!

Driving Inland

As I drove east and then north into Georgia the terrain changed. The further north I got the more hilly it got, and when I got to Warm Springs, where Franklin Roosevelt received his polio treatments, I was definitely in the mountains. The flat backwaters of the coastal areas seem so far away now, both in time and distance.

I climbed the mountains in my camper, and was reminded of the mountains in the west during my 1938 trip last fall. I’ve learned so much about driving my van and can now tackle those steep inclines and declines with confidence. While I’m on the subject of the camper, I’ll also throw in that I’m pretty good at backing into campsites, I have had no problems whatsoever managing my battery levels to maintain my electrical power, and my organization systems that I put into place have been working like a charm. I’m happy to be going home after three weeks on the road, but I take great pride and pleasure in knowing that I could keep going for another three weeks or more if I wanted (or needed) to.

Daniel Boone went through here. Lots of Civil War history. And Lexington is horse country. Miles and miles of pastureland with beautiful thoroughbreds grazing with their colts frolicking nearby. Although I can’t say that the grass looked particularly blue to me, this is definitely bluegrass country, home of the music I love so much. Of course, I had to stream my favorite bluegrass musicians while driving the last two days. My heroes kept me company: Emmylou Harris, Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck, Steep Canyon Rangers, John Prine, Nanci Griffith, Gillian Welch, etc. etc. I could go on but you get the idea. My van was rockin’ with the bluegrass greats while I drove through this neck of the country!

Reflections As I Head Home

As I drove through the Deep South I was aware of some contradictions I was feeling. I tried to absorb and understand and appreciate the southern culture that is so prevalent throughout this region, but couldn’t help thinking about how that culture has been influenced by the backdrop of slavery. How could the institution of slavery have been justified and practiced so obsessively and passionately that it took a bloody and protracted war to end it? There are reminders of this history everywhere, and I wondered what it is like to live here for the descendents of the Black families who chose to stay after the Civil War, then through the Reconstruction backlash, then through the Jim Crow era and the terrorism of lynch mobs, and then following the strife and violence of the Civil Rights Movement, all the way up to today with the stark injustices and racial disparities of the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex. Clearly, many of those who were directly impacted by this history have been able to make peace with it and forge on with resilience and dignity. Why am I finding reconciliation difficult?

I drive through this part of the country as a visitor, not a native. My white privilege, as well as having grown up north of the Mason Dixon line, prevent me from truly understanding the historical legacies that surround me in the South. There is much I do not know. So I observe. I reflect. I question. Here are a few of my thoughts as I try to learn and understand:

• Georgia was established as the last of the 13 colonies in 1733. Originally, the trustees managing it sought to create opportunity for all and restricted the size of the properties the settlers could have. Slavery was prohibited. By the 1740’s, however, both of these restrictions had fallen by the wayside in the interest of economic competition and capitalist ambition. The white settlers in Georgia wanted the same economic opportunities that their counterparts had in places like neighboring South Carolina (where slavery was the foundation that supported the thriving economy there), and gradually the rules bent to the will of the settlers. As a result, large wealthy plantations (such as the one at Hofwyl-Broadfield that I visited) proliferated and became forced labor camps that made possible the economic squeeze of competition that drove out all but the most enterprising and ambitious landowners.

  • What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to set aside a prohibition on slavery and decide, with the stroke of a pen, that an entire population of people will now be considered in the same category as livestock? Was there any crisis of conscience at all?

• The Georgia coastal area with its extensive wetlands, swamps and marshes, was not suitable for cotton, which was the primary cash crop in most of the rest of the areas that allowed people to be enslaved. It was suitable for rice, however, and apparently working on a rice plantation in the Carolinas or Georgia was one of the worst places to be if you were a captive laborer. Malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases were rampant, causing illness and death among those whose lives were considered expendable in the name of profit and wealth. The landowners and their families, choosing not to suffer those hardships, simply moved themselves out of the lowland tidewaters and spent the blistering hot summers in the cities where they could experience their genteel lives in the lap of luxury. Their captive workers did not have that option, of course, and labored in the hottest, harshest conditions imaginable during the summer planting season.

  • One irony in this history is the likely fact that the techniques for growing rice successfully came from West Africa. These people who were kidnapped and sent to South Carolina and Georgia brought with them many centuries of rice know-how. The difference in this country was that they were trying to grow rice in much harsher environmental conditions than in the cultivated areas that had served them for generations back home in Africa. Not to mention that they were captives and forced into labor. Once here, however, they preserved their cultural practices regarding both the cultivating and cooking of rice, which have been handed down through their descendents for generations ever since. Important evidence of the preservation of dignity and resilience in the presence of tyranny and horror.

• Many, if not most, of the historical markers alongside the roadways tell of wartime events - either Civil War or Revolutionary War. Statues and monuments are present everywhere. Schools and streets named after these warriors. I declined to deviate from my path to go see the Jefferson Davis Memorial site in Georgia, but then a few moments later I found myself driving on the “Jefferson Davis Highway” which was apparently so designated as part of a larger effort to create an east to west highway system beginning in Virginia and extending through the south all the way to California. The full route was never officially completed or named, but there are segments of it in many areas of the south, and I inadvertently happened onto one of them as I was driving in south Georgia.

  • Where does this tendency to endlessly glorify and honor wartime conquests and battles come from? Nonviolent examples of solving problems and cultivating unity and harmony go unnoticed and largely unreported. Why is this?

• I admit that I have a fascination with the history of the South, and I have enjoyed immensely the opportunity to visit and meander in and around these states. They are beautiful, and friendly, and interesting and, as noted, full of contradictions. I have always been an avid student of American history and I have always had an interest in the events leading up to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, which I lived through as a child. I have spent a large part of my professional and personal life trying to understand and remediate the social consequences we live with today that (in my humble opinion) directly result from the decisions made so many years ago that allowed forced labor camps to be supplied with kidnapped families who were held captive for their entire lives.

  • What is it about humans that allows this to happen? Why is it so easy to simply throw people away or treat them as nonhuman? Sadly, we have many modern-day examples of brutality imposed by one group over another, and I worry for the future of our wonderful country if we can’t figure out how to foster reconciliation rather than annihilation (to paraphrase Clarence Jordan).

There is much to appreciate in terms of how these southern states are grappling with the best way to remember the past and still honor the individuals and families on all sides of the political and racial dividing lines. When I drive past a yard with a confederate flag flying high I cringe at the “in your face” message of racial hate it implies. On the other hand, the stunning beauty of the mansions that were borne out of the extreme wealth and materialism of the slave-holding landowners of the past cannot be denied.

My trip was a joy and I will definitely be back!

Until next time.

Resources for this article

• https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210307-how-rice-shaped-the-american-south

• https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/colonial-settlement-1600-1763/georgia-colony-1732-1750/