Covering 400,000 acres in southeast Georgia, the Okefenokee Swamp is the largest blackwater swamp in the country. The vegetation leaches out into the water making it the color of strong tea or weak coffee and it’s really beautiful. The Okefenokee Swamp is a National Natural Landmark and much of it is a designated wilderness area. It’s home to 600 species of plants, 400 vertebrates, 60 reptiles and 200 birds. There are 120 miles of water trails in the park, and getting out on the water is essential. I chose a kayak for my adventure because it was a beautiful day and allowed me to really get out into the swamp and experience it. It was so quiet out there, and by quiet I mean the absence of human noise. The sounds of the birds and the wind through the grass and the frogs and insects was amazing. I’m sure the bugs and heat are terrible in the summer, but when I was there, it couldn’t have been better. This was one of the best days I’ve had in Georgia. I hope you enjoy my photos from the Okefenokee Swamp!
Hello everyone and Happy Holidays to you all. I know I’ve had quite a few people subscribe this week, so if you’re new to this newsletter, welcome! My Week on the Road posts are basically my digital journal entries for the week just past. I do try my best to do one every week, but sometimes life has other plans. You can click on any of my photos to see a full-screen view, and most places I mention have links attached if you click on the name.
This week has been spent on beaches, near lighthouses and under Spanish moss as I made my way down the Georgia coast from Savannah to Brunswick. The scenery has been magnificent, and the people have been great as well and it has been wonderful to get some good seafood again. Brunswick has been my base of operations these last few days as I explored the coastal barrier islands of South Georgia. It’s been a busy week, as usual, but a good one. The days have been short, but the weather has been good. I’ve been in shorts and a T-shirt while North Carolina has been blasted with snow. I did get my Canon camera off to the repair shop for a new shutter, and it will be waiting for me at home in D.C. when I get there for Christmas. I have been using my old Olympus E510 this week which is pretty outdated at this point in time, but it’s been chugging along and I’m very grateful to have it. I apologize that my photos aren’t quite up to par this week, but they’ll be back on track in the new year. It’s been a fast month here in Georgia, as I have had to keep the pace up to make my flight home from Orlando next week, and I’ll admit I’m pretty tired. I’ve been going seven days a week all month, and I am definitely looking forward to a break. This last week was my last full week in the Peach State, and it has been a really good and fascinating week and month…
Having spent most of my life either working in travel and tourism or traveling myself, I have grown tired of organized city tours and rarely go on them. There are plenty of resources available in cities and I can usually sift through what I want to see and do pretty easily. Enlisting the help of the staff at the Visitors Center, the brochure racks around town, old standbys like Yelp and TripAdvisor, and maybe an outlier like Thrillist or Atlas Obscura, I can find the best that a city has to offer, custom tailored to my personal likes and dislikes. I don’t like the standard cramped bus tour and I’ve done enough ghost tours that they have started to sound the same to me. Unless it is an in-depth tour on a specific subject I’m interested in or it provides access to something I want to see but can’t unless I’m on a guided tour, I usually give them a miss. But every now and then something will catch my eye which I simply must try.
And so it was that I stumbled across a tour which I couldn’t leave without checking out: Savannah For Morons. Savannah For Morons is an irreverent look at Savannah history and culture hosted by the Moron Twins, Johnny and Danny Moron (actually John Brennan and Dan Gilbert of the local Front Porch Improv Group).
Tybee Island is a cute little beach community just 18 miles from Savannah. It is the easternmost point of Georgia and has wonderful a wonderful beach, a nice fishing pier and a cute downtown area. The highlight for me though, as I’m sure you will guess, is the Tybee Island Light Station. A lighthouse was first built on the site in 1736, and the bottom half of the current structure dates from 1773. The top half was replaced in 1867. It is the oldest and tallest lighthouse in Georgia.
Established in 1846 on an old plantation, Bonaventure Cemetery is the largest municipal cemetery in the city of Savannah. It gained notoriety from John Berendt’s novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and it’s film adaptation, and is one of the more visited sites in Savannah with several companies offering tours. It was also featured in John Muir’s Thousand Mile Walk, as he camped out in the cemetery for 6 days on his journey. I visited Bonaventure by myself and enjoyed wandering through this peaceful park. The Spanish moss gives it so much Southern atmosphere. Bonaventure is the final resting place of Savannah’s own Johnny Mercer and many other notable people from the city. It also has some magnificent statues. I hope you enjoy these photos from beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery…
The days are getting real short out here in east Georgia, but the weather has warmed up and the sun has reemerged, so at least that is something. This week has had its challenges, but a challenging week from time to time is to be expected. I’m pretty used to going with the flow and rolling with the punches, but this week has had a few more punches thrown in than usual. Not being able to find someone local to fix my camera, it is off to the Canon repair shop, so it will be a few weeks before I get it back. Not to worry, my spare is on its way from DC, and I should have it by the time you are actually reading this. This week’s post may not have the best photos with it, but fear not, this will all get sorted out in a few weeks. On a more positive note, I finally got the chance to check out one of my photos which went into Atlanta Magazine last month of the amazing Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi. It made me feel proud that my work is being appreciated in such a great publication (see the article HERE).
When I signed off last week, I made my way down to Albany, a city of about 75,000 on the Flint River. When I arrived, I went straight to the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum at the old Mount Zion Church. This is a wonderful little museum which details the role Albany played in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. My visit began with a short video showing the conditions in Southwest Georgia in the lead-up to the demonstrations there and also how the demonstrations played out. After the video, I had a very short guided tour of the museum and Mount Zion church, one of the local churches which hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited Albany. When my tour was over, I spent some time looking a little more closely at the exhibits, and listening to the voices of the people who were there…
Columbus, Georgia was a city that surprised me. Much like Greenville, South Carolina and Cincinnati, Ohio, I came in with limited expectations and found myself falling more in love with it around every turn. The city has obvious industrial roots, but they have re-purposed many of the old industrial buildings and turned the once gritty downtown into a modern, walkable, very enjoyable town. Columbus is the third largest city in the state with a population of just under 200,000, and their economy relies heavily on nearby Fort Benning. It is also the home of Aflac Insurance and Columbus State University. Beyond these major employers though, Columbus is making major strides in attracting tourism, and from my perspective they are well on their way.
And so it was that I found myself in their wonderful Visitor’s Center trying to find a way to spend my day. It was a beautiful Georgia fall day with clear skies and a very agreeable temperature, and I wanted to spend the day outside taking photos of the city. My question for the people working at the Visitor’s Center was simple: what are the most iconic locations in Columbus? What are the places that someone born and raised there would recognize instantly, no matter how long they had been gone for? This is a seemingly simple question, but probably not one they receive every day. The three of us discussed it for some time, and put together a fairly extensive list. They had incredible resources ton hand to work with from a driving tour of the lovely Midtown neighborhood to an African American History Walking Tour pamphlet of downtown. After about a half-hour of discussing the most recognizable places in town, I set off to take the photos you’ll find below…
It’s been an interesting week out here on the road. The weather has been clear and sunny, and very cool for Georgia. I started the week in Athens, made my way through Atlanta for Thanksgiving and then headed towards the southwest of the state. Columbus was a wonderful surprise, and I found some great places to take photos along the back roads as well. The holiday threw a loop into my work schedule, but it was nice to take a bit of a breather for a change as well. I’ve booked a flight home for Christmas from Orlando, so I’m on more of a schedule than I normally am, but I’m making good progress to and through Georgia and enjoying every mile of it.
After I left you last week, I went for a burger at Georgia’s iconic Varsity and then headed out in downtown Athens for a few drinks. Athens definitely has some cool bars to explore, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to go out there. I really liked the dark, cool vibe of the Manhattan Cafe where I could sip on a bourbon and sit on the couch and just relax for a minute. They had a great selection of drinks with some special winter favorites like hot buttered rum, and a very chill atmosphere. I also liked the funky, arty, unorthodox Sister Louisa’s Church, which reminded me of some of my favorite weird bars at home and in New Orleans…
The Doll’s Head Trail in Atlanta is definitely different. While this post would probably have been better around Halloween, I visited the day after Thanksgiving when many things around the city were closed. The trail got its start when a local resident was out picking up trash in Constitution Lakes Park, where the trail is located, and ended up finding a lot of broken toys. He started creating this macabre outdoor art exhibit some time later, and its popularity has grown since then. It was definitely something different to see in Atlanta, and worth a look if you are looking for something free, close and outdoors. I wouldn’t visit on a full moon if I were you though.
When I asked my very well-traveled group of friends for recommendations on where to go in Georgia, probably 90% of them came back pointing me to the far north of the state. I admit I really had no idea how spectacular North Georgia is. Nestled in the southernmost region of the Appalachian Mountains, North Georgia is full of beautiful scenery, quaint towns and villages and warm, welcoming people. If North Georgia isn’t yet on your must-see list, it sure should be. I hope you enjoy these wonderful photos from my journey through the mountain towns of North Georgia.
Helen, Georgia is a fascinating and beautiful place and a real tribute to creativity in tourism initiatives. With a population of around 500, Helen is the third most visited city in all of Georgia. Helen was a dying lumber town in January of 1969 when three local businessmen met to discuss the future of their town. They wondered how they could attract tourism to the area, and thought maybe if they spruced up Main Street a bit, they might entice people to stop for a night or a meal on their way to or from the mountains. One of these men contacted John Kollock, an artist whose family had roots in the region. They asked John if he could make a few sketches and suggest a good direction for the town. John looked at the town, nestled in a beautiful mountain valley, and it reminded him of Bavarian towns he had seen in Germany during his time in the service. His sketches were well received and by that fall, the town had a new facade. Tourists started to come, and have kept coming. Today, over three million people visit Helen every year, so I’d say tourism is working for them. There is plenty of normal tourist trap hullabaloo around town, but some really beautiful buildings as well. Heck, even the Huddle House looks like it fell out of a Fairy Tale. You can get a pretty decent German meal, and definitely a Liter of good German beer. I really loved seeing this place sprucing up for Christmas and my camera loved it as well. I thought I was going to make this a quick stop and ended up there for hours. Helen is a charming little town, well worth a detour. I’m glad I visited. I hope you enjoy these photos from Helen!
Cloudland Canyon State Park is in the far northwest corner of Georgia, an easy half-day trip from Chattanooga and a reasonable day-trip from Atlanta. It is a beautiful place with a thousand-foot deep canyon on the western edge of Lookout Mountain. Even the name makes me smile and conjures up magical images in my head. The hike down to the waterfalls involves a lot of steps, but is well worth the effort. I got there a little late in the day to get good light for my photos in the canyon itself, but the stunning dusk and sunset views from the rim made up for it. This was a wonderful introduction to the state and a great place to spend the afternoon. This was my first visit to Cloudland Canyon, but it will not be my last. I hope you enjoy these photos from my visit, remember you can always click on them to see a larger view.
