Day 1 - Serendipity

My first day on the road was one of serendipity. I didn't get on the road until nearly lunch time, which wasn't exactly a surprise. I had figured I wouldn't get out as early as I wanted, which meant that although I was late for being on time, I was on time for being late. This threw off my schedule a bit because the only stop I had planned for my first day was lunch in a restaurant in Washington, GA called Bones Biscuit Bar & Grill. It was 3pm as I was getting near my stop and I could still taste the Chik-Fil-A I had downed only a couple hours earlier and I was feeling obligated to get my biscuit on even though I wasn't remotely hungry. It turned out m concern was in vain because I couldn't find the place. I circled around the area three times, not even seeing a hint of biscuit so I pulled into the nearest parking lot to double check my bearings. After confirming my directions and shrugging it off I looked up from my phone and realized I had pulled into a small town square. The square of the town of Washington, Georgia.

I never had any intention of checking out Washington, but the picture-perfect small town view before me told me I should give it a check. According to signs posted around the square Washington is a stop on Georgia's Civil War Heritage Trail. While that's an interesting tidbit, I never saw anything that told me why. So I decided to enlist some local help while I cooled off with some good old sweet tea. The waitress in the cafe tried her best, but after a few umm's and err's she finally said she wasn't from around here so she didn't have any idea. All she could provide me was her take on the origin of the towns name, that being the proximity to the site of the Battle of Kettle Creek in which General Washington pushed back the British advance on Georgia. While it was an interesting story, I ignored the fact that I was asking about Civil War history and she gave me a Revolutionary War anecdote. I later tried to enlist the help of Washington, Georgia's premiere taxidermist and avid African safari hunter. While he could recite the whereabouts and whatnots of just about every squad-mate he had in his 30 year career in the Marines, he too could not tell me why it was a stop on the Heritage Trail. Incidentally, the Trail's website is equally as useless.

The rest of the day, while incredibly beautiful and relaxing, was pretty uneventful until I got to the campground I found after making a wrong turn. Sleeping arrangements solved, I expected the day to be over and relax until the sun went down, but it turned out the campground was frequented by two kids who were perpetually bored and lonely and I made the mistake of saying "hey" to them. That was enough to have them spend a grand total of 2 hours across three or four visits. The problem was that of the two kids, one about 16 and the other probably 8-ish, the youngest one was the only one with anything to say. The older kid, whose name was Debbonaireus but went by Deebo, pretty much only said "for sure" in response to everything. The young kid, whose name I never did figure out despite him saying it 3 different times, just rambled on about hunting and catching frogs. The final visit it was just Deebo and we stood there for about 20 minutes in one nearly continuous awkward silence. As the sun was beginning to set he mentioned something about heading home, thanked me for hanging out with him, shook my hand, and rode off into the sunset.

And then I didn't sleep. The campground, which was situated on the edge of a swampy-marshy-lakey thingy, was inhabited by an unnervingly large army of tree frogs. When I first showed up their sounds were kind of a peaceful symphony of nature, but after dark they turned it up to 11 and it was like a war chant meant to intimidate their opposition - me. The upside to not sleeping was that I got to take in the excellent view of the stars, and after a while even begin to pick out individual frogs from the cacophony. One of which sounded exactly like a car alarm. As I finally began to wear down, slipping in and out of a hypnagogic state, I even started the hear their sounds as a song, complete with lyrics. I even startled myself a few times when I swore I heard actual identifiable words. And then I sorta slept...

Pictures to come