Driving Through Dixie, Part 1
Across Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia to Atlanta
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Travels Home Page / Page Updated 8-29-05
By Lewis Nolan
We had wanted to visit the beautiful and
historic city of Savannah, Georgia ever since watching the movie, “Midnight in
the Garden of
Good and Evil” several years ago. We had also wanted to
return to Charleston, South Carolina ever since Betty had spent nearly a week at
a culinary academy there a decade ago and I had joined her for a few
days.
So when Casey told us he would be moving into a
new apartment in Arlington,
Virginia in July 2005, our big driving trip though the heart of Dixie began to
take shape. We spent a week in Amsterdam during Betty’s spring break from
teaching culinary arts at a Memphis high school in March. We decided that
another trip to Ireland would have to wait until the summer of 2006 when we
could take advantage of our stockpile of frequent flyer
miles.
Plotting our route was pretty much decided by
our planned stops. We wanted to stop in Atlanta to meet the parents of Casey’s
girlfriend of two years, Caroline Cardon of Atlanta. JoAnn Cardon-Glass and her
husband, Ron Glass, had suggested we get together for lunch or dinner while
passing through. It made sense for us to drive from our home in Memphis to
Atlanta, meet them for dinner at our hotel and head out the following morning.
Betty and I spent most of our first year of
marriage in Northern Virginia, where I was stationed at the Marine Corps base at
Quantico (Viet Nam was cooking at full boil then). I was a corporal and editor
of the base newspaper and Betty taught elementary school in nearby Stafford. Our
love was rich but our money was scarce. We stretched our very modest income by
spending most Saturdays in late 1968 and early 1969 at Virginia’s magnificent,
Civil War battlefield parks or at the free museums in Washington, DC.
We spent a great many enjoyable hours at such
Civil War battle sites as Fredericksburg, Manassas (Bull Run to Northerners),
Antietum, Chancellorsville and other locations where Confederate forces held the
upper hand early in the war. Due to the driving distance from Quantico and
expense of fueling our high performance Mustang, we had missed seeing the alpha
and omega locations of the war. The alpha was Fort Sumter in the mouth of the
harbor at Charleston, S. C.; where it all started April 12, 1861 when
Confederate cannon fired on a Union Army garrison. The omega was where the
beginning of the end came April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered
the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses Grant.
From Atlanta, Appomattox is an easy, half-day
drive. Appomattox to Arlington is another half-day’s drive. There is lots to see
and do in and around Appomattox so we allocated two nights for our stay there,
followed by three nights for our stay with Casey and visits to various war
memorials. It’s an all-day drive from Arlington to Charleston. The drive from
Charleston to Savannah is less than a half-day, giving us lots of time to poke
around the Historic District. We had first planned on making the drive from
Savannah to Memphis in two days. But by pushing it and going way out of our way
to stick to Interstate highways, we scooted across Georgia and Tennessee -
making it home in 11 hours.
It was a great trip. The highpoints were, of
course, spending time with Casey, Caroline and her parents. Learning more about
the two of the most important actions of the Civil War provided a lot of
satisfaction. Spending two nights in a fabulous B&B in Savannah was a lot of
fun. On the negative side, the heat in Arlington, Charleston and Savannah
was beyond brutal. We made
the trip in Betty’s anniversary Mustang, a white convertible nicknamed “Sally,”
but didn’t put the top down a single time. The driving conditions were close to
ideal with good roads and generally light traffic due to our timing and the good
luck of not having to pass through major highway repairs. Nonetheless, it was a
long, tiring trip of nearly 2,489 miles that we’ll not soon
repeat.
July 5, 2005, Tuesday – Memphis to Atlanta
Packed, planned and rested, we pulled out of our
driveway in Mustang Sally on schedule at 8 a.m. We had dropped off our adopted
Greyhound at the boarding kennel in West Memphis yesterday. We earlier made
reservations through the Priceline service on the Internet for lodging in
Atlanta; Lynchburg, Virginia; Charleston and Savannah. We have a small cooler of
soft drinks, bottled water and sandwiches.
Per the advice of our good friend Tim Parks, we
will drive across Mississippi and much of Alabama on U.S. 78. His business has
operations in both Atlanta and Memphis and he frequently drives back and forth,
most often on U.S. 72 to I-65 in Birmingham and then on I-20 to Atlanta. Tim was
worried that we might miss a turn or two in rural Alabama so suggested the U.S.
78 route.
The highway was four lanes wide, generally
smooth and with little traffic all across the width of North Mississippi. But
the easy drive turned bad about 50 miles inside Alabama, where the divided
highway became two lanes and sometimes three lanes wide. The road passed through
numerous little towns and wide spots in the road, each with one or more sets of
stop lights and slow speed limits. The drivers of big trucks, pickups and
beat-up sedans were no more courteous on this day than we remember them being 40
or so years ago when we last drove this awful stretch of road to Birmingham. We
ran into fairly heavy traffic and sections of bumpy pavement just outside of
Birmingham and it stayed that way until we reached Atlanta. I do not understand
why Alabama – unlike Mississippi – has put up with such sorry roadway connecting
its most populous city of Birmingham with Memphis and other points to the
west.
Point of interest: There are no rest stops
anywhere on eastbound U.S. 78 and I-20 between Memphis and Birmingham. The rest
rooms at the Georgia Welcome Center near the Alabama line on I-20 were closed
for repairs/renovations. Some welcome.
We resolved to take a different route home on
the way back even if it means going way out of our way.
It took us 7 ½ hours to reach downtown Atlanta’s
Marriott Marquis Hotel on Peachtree Plaza. That was nearly one hour longer than
it
should have taken without all the bottlenecks. The hotel is
ultra nice. Our room is on the 35th floor of the 45-story building.
We have a great view of the downtown skyline from our window.
Tired from the stressful drive, I took an
hour-long nap so I wouldn’t be like a grouchy bear at dinner. We had a
delightful meal and get-acquainted evening with JoAnn and Ron. We all agree that
our adult children are perfectly matched.
Casey and their beautiful daughter, Caroline,
met at an Atlanta health club two summers ago. Casey, then an MBA student at
Harvard, was doing an internship in Atlanta with a big real estate development
company. She was about to enter her fourth year in accounting at the University
of Virginia, where Casey earlier earned his bachelor’s degree in civil
engineering. They have been dating ever since, by long distance for more than a
year and a half. The two now live less than a mile from one another in
Arlington. Casey commutes to Fort Belvoir, where he is a development executive
in charge of building more than 1,600 privately owned, housing units for the
U.S. Army. Caroline, who passed all the CPA exams on her first try, is an
auditor for a major accounting firm.
We were awakened by a fierce
thunderstorm pelting our window with heavy rain. There is a tropical storm
gathering strength deep in the Caribbean that has us worried. Projections are
that it will come ashore - with possible hurricane strength winds – on the
Alabama/Florida Panhandle coast.
Since it was just last month that our condo at
Gulf Shores, Ala., was again habitable, Betty and I nervously watched the
progress of Hurricane Dennis on the Weather Channel for the next week. The
impact of Hurricane Ivan last September 16 was devastating to our property as
well as that of thousands of others. The roof of our oceanfront condo building
failed in the face of winds over 100 mph. A gap in the ceiling opened up and
rainwater poured into our place, ruining the carpet, wallpaper and most of the
furniture. It took 9 months to get the roof repaired, power restored and the
interior/exterior of the building renovated. Many nearby buildings are far from
complete. It’s that way all along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. The thought that
another big blow could return us to square one is not a pleasant
one.
As much as we like Atlanta, we didn’t have the
time to stay over an extra day or two to revisit some favorite places (Atlanta
Botanical Garden leads the list) or see some others for the first time (high on
this list are the High Museum of Art - which we missed out on during on a
previous trip when we showed up right at closing time because our watches were
still running on Central Standard Time - and the Jimmy Carter Presidential
Library and Museum.)
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