Day 04 - Griffin, GA to Mobile, AL

    

 

 

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

 

I made camp the evening prior on the driveway at Aunt Blanche's house. I prepared breakfast & coffee inside Bigfoot and then served Aunt Blanche at her table. Cousin Henry dropped in to say hello about this time. Cousin Henry can smell a good biscuit from a mile away!

 

After breakfast I set up my Nikon D-200 on the table to make copies of some of the many old family photographs that Aunt Blanche has meticulously scrapbooked over the years. These photos are now included in the archive...

 

Aunt Blanche's late husband, my Uncle Woodrow.

 

Aunt Blanche picked sweetly on my Gibson Dove while I copied old family photographs. She picked one of the same songs that Uncle Free had picked a couple of days prior - "Spanish Firebells"...

 

After wrapping up the picture copying, I followed Aunt Blanche over to Aunt Lois' house for a visit.

 

Click here to see a Griffin visit made back in May of 2005.

 

From Aunt Lois' house I headed back through Griffin, then southward... bound for Alabama and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

At this point in the journey the familiar connections to "home" are being left behind. When living in Charlotte the "familiar circle" takes in Columbia and Charleston to the south... up the Atlantic coast to Myrtle Beach, Wilmington & Wrightsville Beach... up to the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill)... through Greensboro and Winston-Salem... westward to the Appalachian foothills, Boone, Asheville, Cherokee, Murphy... and south to the Atlanta area. This forms a rough circle around Charlotte, going out to about 200 miles - the "familiar circle." Moving south from Griffin I've stepped outside the old "familiar circle" again...

 

 

Back through Griffin...

 

       

 

 

 

Rolling on down through middle Georgia...

 

       

 

   

 

 

Crossing the Chattahoochee River and entering Alabama...

 

 

Southeastward, through Alabama...

 

       

 

       

 

 

I made Mobile, Alabama by nightfall. As I approached Mobile a railroad track was to the right of the road. I saw a crew working on the railroad which brought to mind the old Chuck Berry song "Let It Rock"...

 

"In the heat of the day, down in Mobile, Alabama
Working on the railroad with a steel drivin' hammer"

 

I wasn't able to get a picture as it was a bit too dark and the moment a bit too fleeting. Right about then I was aware that the melancholy of leaving so much behind was giving way to the adventure of the road...