Georgia on our Minds

Travelling north out of Florida, we moved up through the middle of Georgia en route to the Great Smoky Mountains. We avoided Interstates as much as possible, although at Tifton we were lucky enough to spy a Starbucks advertisement so Clare could get her fix for the day.

Although she would not normally have coffee from Starbucks in Australia (not great coffee, paper cups!), espresso has not taken off so much on this side of the USA,and cappucinos can be very hard to find. If you stay off the beaten track, you can travel 100's of miles between espresso shops, and a Starbucks outlet thus becomes a welcome sight.

We deviated to Andersonville to visit what proved to be magnificent National Monument commemorating Prisoners of War. Our Navman had some trouble getting us here, but we made it in the end. Andersonville was the site of the biggest Civil War prison camp on either side (it was a Confederate camp), and due to how the camp design contaminated its own drinking water, it suffered the highest number and percentage of prisoner deaths. The cemetery here was large, crowded and most moving. The dead soldiers were originally identified only by numbered stakes, but, after the war, the lady who established the American Red Cross (and others) painstakingly went through the records and identified the soldier associated with every numbered stake. Now these names of these soldiers appear on small tombstones across the cemetery. Like all war cemeteries, this is a very moving place.

But more fascinating is the site of the camp itself, about a kilometer away, with some reconstructions and other devices to clearly show where the wells were dug (in a desperate search for water during the hot summer drought, and to build escape tunnels), where the stockade (perimeter fence was), where the "deadline" was inside the stockade, beyond which any prisoner would be shot, and where Providence Spring appeared after a downpour to save the lives and quench the thirsts of the prisoners. The photo shows this site and some of the numerous memorials erected by the northern states to show where their citizens tended to congregate in the camp. Apparently the men from the individual states tended to stick together for better morale and peer support.

The museum at this historic monument features an incredibly gruesome and moving movie reconstruction of life inside this horror camp. The museum itself seems to memorialise American POWs of all wars, as well as foreign POWs held in American camps.

Although we spent a night in the large city of Macon (rhymes with "bacon"), we cruised up through Georgia mostly on back roads and passed through some delightful little towns, such as Juliette (where the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed, centering on the Whistle Stop Cafe, see photo). Andersonville itself as particularly charming, as were places such as Monticello and Eatonville. In this last town, we stumbled across a very cute cafe which served cappucino, so we stopped there for a break. The photo shows the inside of this cafe, which was preparing for a lunch rush. While we were there, the phone rang repeatedly with people asking what was on - it was chicken pie and squash casserole, with rice and green beans!

We started to notice that the lakes and rivers are at very low levels. The "high tide" marks are well up from the present water edge, and some boats and wharves are particularly high and dry. There is a serious drought in this part of the US.