Year: 2015

Good Morning Sunshine

Good Morning Sunshine

On our trip down to FLA we spent the night in Darien, GA right next to I-95, so come morning we could jump on the Interstate and get by Jacksonville before the commuters clogged the roadways. I set the alarm for 5:30 and double checked to make sure it was AM as I’ve mis-set that a few times in the past. Thursday morning we woke without the alarm at almost 7 o’clock. My alarm setting was spot on, but I failed to make sure the clock itself was set to the correct Meridian, Ante or Post. Actually the late start was not a problem as this put us passing around Jacksonville after the morning rush.

Friday night I set the alarm on the cell phone for 5:30 AM, because Donna wanted to be up to say goodbye to one of Sandy’s Seattle area friends before she headed to the airport to fly home. Saturday morning we woke with out the alarm at about 20 minutes after 6:00 AM. The alarm never went off because we keep the thing on silent so as to not bother us at an inopportune time, but unfortunately that also prevents it from waking us at the opportune one.

We’ll finish the trip home tomorrow, but for today we’ve stopped in Ocala because it is about halfway and we wanted to try and find the one geocache left not found in a local Conservation Area. About 4 this afternoon Donna wanted a nap, she said I could read if I wanted, but could I lay on the bed with her. I opted to shut my eyes for a bit too. Saturday afternoon we woke to the blaring of the hotel alarm clock at 5:30. Whoever was here last must have wanted it to go off at 5:30 PM. Or maybe they meant 5:30 AM and messed it up. Then again we stayed in this very same hotel back in November on a return trip Florida, maybe that someone was me.

53,000 Things It Could Be

Yesterday we filled up the Miata with gas. I came home and checked all the other owner serviceable fluid levels, they were all nominal. I washed the windows inside and out. We are headed down to Florida for the Celebration of Life for Sandy. The Miata was our transport of choice so we could score some more Motoring Challenge points.

One of the categories this year is Moss Motors Distributors. One point each for the first three and two points for numbers 4 & 5. There happens to be two of the distributors on the same street in Stuart which is the next town over from where we are going to be. Plus we had in mind a certain place just off I-75 in Micanopy, Florida for our Adult Playground Destination – Cafe Risqué!

After a few minutes creatively loading the trunk of the Emperor with probably more stuff than we really needed for a 4 day trip, I backed out of the garage and headed down the road. Three houses away I noticed a pretty orange symbol mid-dash that was unfamiliar…
check-engine-light_8D0206E867F895F0

Pulled over, shut the car off, then started it back up. The check engine light stayed on, so we u-turned back home. Unloaded everything from the trunk and cockpit, tossed it all in the respective places in the Sonata. Then added some more stuff, because we could, and got back on the road. Total lost time 5 minutes.

The light could mean any of 53,000 things could be wrong, from major to minor, but no sense taking any chances. I’ll get the code read at the corner auto parts store when we get back to see what it says. I have been watching all chatter about the new Miata over on the Miata Forum with a gleam in my eye recently, much the chagrin of the family CFO, and she even went so far as to suggest that this light might a subtle ploy towards getting one. She told me to forget about it, even if we need a whole engine, we’ll be getting that before we take up car payments again.

About 5 miles north of Statesboro, GA the Purple Whale passed through the 53,000 mile mark.

Beam Me Down Scotty

City - Bowman, SCAfter finishing up the graffiti photo shoot we continued on into Bowman, the home of the UFO Welcome Center. We visited (AKA drove by) the place when we were in Bowman taking post office pictures back in 2007. Knowing that a roadside attraction might be worth a point in the Motoring Challenge, we thought we might drive by again and get a photo.

Trouble was we didn’t have the location of the Welcome Center. I seemed to remember that it was like one street of the main drag. Bowman ain’t that big, how hard could it be? US178 runs through it northwest to southeast and SC210 is perpendicular to that. There are maybe 6 streets each, parallel to those roads.

We had covered about half of our search area when I noticed a big blue water tower with TOWN OF BOWMAN painted with what looked like a house painting roller. To add extra interest, the tower was home to an very large flock of turkey vultures. We still needed a town that began with the letter B, so…

We never really paid any attention to water towers before, but ever since we needed a picture of one for the Motoring Challenge we realized they are everywhere. This got my weird little mind thinking, maybe we should use a water tower that has the town name on it for all of the challenge requirements. Donna said that maybe I shouldn’t make this any more difficult than it already is. I’ll work on her, if we do this again in 2016 that will be how we do it.

After taking the water tower photo we headed out of town towards home, when out of the corner of her eye, Donna saw the Welcome Center. We circled back to get a photo, but after seeing the structure, decided against it. It was very dilapidated and looked like it might fall down any minute. Looking through the Google Images of the thing though, it appears to have been in this same state for a lot longer than that time frame.

I searched the Life of Brian for the photo I was sure we took during our first visit, but can’t seem to find it. Thinking on it now, I bet I didn’t take a photo in 2007 for the same reason I didn’t take one last weekend, that thing is ugly.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1461

Artistic Graffiti

Destination - Artistic Graffiti

What exactly constitutes Artistic Graffiti, I’ll leave that debate to the finer minds of the NY Times, for me it will be anything above a hastily painted gang marking on a stop sign.

I’m sure if we lived in a large city it would be easy to find something like that, but here in Our Fair (small) City it is really nowhere to be found. A search of the internet for “artistic graffiti Columbia”, the nearest decent sized town, resulted in nothing but mention of art shows with graffiti-like pieces for sale. Because we abhor going to the big cities of Charlotte or Atlanta there was no way we were going to make a pilgrimage there to drive aimlessly through their warehouse districts looking. This left happenstance.

And that is exactly what happened yesterday on our way home from the palindrome. We we zipping right along and had just passed over I-26 on SC210 heading to Bowman when we both noticed something bright blue off to the right. This prompted an immediate u-turn.

When GSV went through in May 2013, whatever the base of this wall was, was already gone, but it was unpainted…


View Larger Map

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1460

Forwards & Backwards

Destination - Palindrome

One of the “destinations” in this year’s Motoring Challenge is a palindrome sign and it is worth 2 points vs. the usual one. This was today’s road trip objective. According to Wikipedia’s page listing palindromic locations we are fortunately within driving distance of one of the three 2nd longest places that are spelled the same forwards and backwards, the 11 letter long Wassamassaw.

Historical Marker text:
(Front)
Wassamassaw, with several variant spellings during the colonial era, is a Native American word thought to mean “connecting water.” It first referred to the large cypress swamp here, but eventually referred to the community that grew up nearby in the Anglican parish of St. James, Goose Creek. Plantations laid out by the English and later by the Huguenots flourished before the Revolution.

(Reverse)
The swamp was almost impassible for most of the colonial period, but the Wassamassaw Road ran just below the swamp between here and Goose Creek. A Chapel of Ease was built nearby shortly after the Yamasee War of 1715, and a free school was founded in 1728. The “Wassamassaw Cavalry,” a militia company founded in 1857, later saw Confederate service as Company D, 2nd S.C. Cavalry.

Of all the entries in the 2015 Challenge for this destination, the best anyone can do is tie us when it comes to length by getting some other variation of Wassamassaw (there is a Baptist Church behind me and then there is a road by that name a few miles away near Summerville) or Ekalaka Lake in Montana. The only longer palindrome named place is Nerren Nerren at 12, but I doubt any Challengers will get it as it is in Western Australia.

Started up, went dow, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1459

Motoring Challenge Points 10*, Approx Miles Driven 255
Totals So Far: 30 points & 655 miles

*5 regular points for photos and 5 bonus points for twittering 5 photos

Place of Worship

Sneak Peek 1b

On this year’s list of Destinations for the Moss Motoring Challenge along with the ambiguous Adult Playground and the straight forward Tow Truck was something called “Place of Worship.”

I noticed the quotes around Place of Worship and was curious as to their meaning as that was the only one such destination so decorated. I emailed the the fellow in charge of the Challenge: Do the rules of Jeopardy apply to the Place of Worship? i.e. Do those words have to be in the photo somewhere? The answer was: “Place of Worship” is in quotes so that Challengers can use their creative freedom. No sign and no words are required in the photo.

This started Donna and I thinking about just which church we would photograph. Our first thought was America’s smallest church in southern Georgia where we had found a geocache a few years ago. We both remembered a great glass chapel we found in Arkansas about 15 years ago, but it is too far away and don’t think we can get the car close enough to photograph. We were still tossing around ideas when much to our surprise we drove right by the above sign on our adventure last Saturday.

It took about ten seconds before we decided to do a u-turn and seek out this Huguenot Place of Worship that promised to be 2 miles down this side road. After about three miles of driving we saw no further sign or any place that looked like a worship site. We turned around and were almost back to our original route when a gravel road led off to our right with a small sign that read “Worship Site”, so we took it. After a while the gravel gave way to just plain dirt dual track. There were only a couple of places where the grooves were deep enough to force me to get the one side on the center and the other on the edge.

We finally came to a small parking area and the monument marking the Place of Worship was 50 yards down a dirt path. Kind of disappointed we couldn’t park closer we walked down to take a picture anyway. But once there, we realized that because it is January and there are no leaves on the trees, if you squint just so, the car is recognizable in the background, if you know where to look.

Destination - Place of Worship

It is at about 2:30 off my left (stage right) shoulder…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1457

Is This The End

Destination - Historic Landmark

We had one other goal yesterday besides the elusive Savannah River sign, snag a somewhat nearby historic landmark. I suppose there are plenty of historical landmarks from various historical societies, but we opted for a place that was bestowed it honor by no other than the Secretary of the Interior of the United States of America. Would we need to fill out some sort of Freedom of Information paperwork? Nope, just surf on over Wikipedia.

Looking at the list for South Carolina shows us there is a National Historic District less than a dozen miles from our front door, Woohoo! But wait a minute, what kind of road trip would that be? Short, that’s what. OK, here’s one in Abbeville, SC, 70 miles away. The Burt-Stark Mansion with a description of “Where the American Civil War ended” fits in with our planned river “cruise.”

If you follow the American Civil War link in the description there is no mention of the house in that article. Inside that article you will find a link for the Conclusion of the American Civil War, but the mansion is not mentioned on that page either.

The only fact I remember about the end of that war was Lee surrendering to Grant at Appomattox (April 9, 1865), but was just the beginning of the end. Confederate President Jefferson Davis had his last meeting with his Cabinet on May 5th in Washington, Georgia where the Confederate Government was dissolved. Mr. Davis was captured on May 10th 150 miles south near Abbeville, Georgia. The last actual Confederate surrender occurred on November 6th when Captain James Waddell turned over the C.S.S. Shenandoah to the Prime Minister of England at Liverpool.

President Andrew Johnson signed a Proclamation that officially ended the war on August 20, 1866. He didn’t do it in Abbeville, South Carolina, so how is it that this, white two story Greek Revival style house came about to claim that it is where the American Civil War ended? For that we have to head over to the mansion’s very own Wikipedia page; Jefferson Davis held his final war council there on May 2, 1865.

Maybe we will have to drive back to Columbia to get another National Historic Landmark to use as a bookend to this one. It could count as one of our sneak peek bonus points. Using that same landmark list, the First Baptist Church in Columbia is listed as “Where the American Civil War started.”