Southern Roads, Sun, 08 Nov 2015 | written by Simon
Simon at a Park in North America, USA

Today I was woken up by a message from the UK. At 10am UK time. Which is 5am here. And then another one. And another one. And it wasn’t even good news!

6am on Tybee Island Beach

 I failed to sleep for another hour, put my swimming pants on and went down to the beach. Not much of a sunrise, as it was very cloudy. And really windy, too. There was a very high wave and it all looked really amazing… and then I remembered that I promised Eva that I will come back home alive. As tempting as it was to jump in, I ended up only walking in knee deep. Such responsible! I hope there will be occassions to swim in the ocean yet.

So tempting!!!

I sat about for a while and left the Tybee Island half an hour before paid parking kicks in. Managed to buy a map on the next petrol station and started driving south. In the meantime it started raining. The plan was to go down the coast, but after the first stop on the Skidaway Island Country Park I changed my mind. Basically, the coast trip just looks too good to waste it on a rainy day. I’ll go south inland and come back on the coast.

Skidaway Island Country Park

I spent some time trying to find the 95 highway and getting lost in Savannah suburbs. Asking for directions was an adventure in Southern accent comprehension. Also, I now know exactly what WhiteVille means. Quite startling. And my gods, this place is expansive! All the houses are ground floor only, which makes the plots super broad, which means that the whole thing is really large and you have to drive for ages to get anywhere. Needless to say, I haven’t seen a single bus. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen a single bus stop until the end of the day.

The radio turned out to be quite curious. I’m not sure how representative a sample I got, but I tried a few stations. Throughout the day I heard: country songs on being a good wife and Christian, several mentions of the US military, and a program where people called in to say how they regained faith. The most common ads I heard came in contradictory pairs: magic lose weight treatments followed by singing about pork chops in double packs, and offers to help you out of debt followed by an Awesome Trailer Voice convincing you that you totally deserve this new Chevrolet and only quietly mentioning some credit thing.

Looks inviting, right?

I drove on along the 84, passing several towns in varying degrees of abandon. I know that they are perfectly adequate for the local climate, but houses here just seem so makeshift to a European used to solid stone and brick three-floor buildings! Most of them just look a bit carton-board. I also passed quite a few seemingly abandoned ones – though I can’t be sure, because I also passed a side road that was blocked with a ruined van with ‘private property’ written on it. You never know and I didn’t feel like checking in case I need to enter a discussion on the advantages of firearms control.

Not particularly comfortable…

What the landscape is not missing, is American flags. There are plenty of those, hanging from windows, stuck on poles, stuck in the ground, painted on garage doors, you name it.

I stopped at Captain Joe’s for lunch. Big plastic shark on the wall and lamps on ship’s wheels kind of place. I was quite lucky, as I arrived just ten minutes before it got really full – people coming back from church, judging by their clothes. Incidentally, all of them white, except for one black couple which came in later. Anyway, the place boasted decent stakes, so I decided to check them out. Not bad, but not great either. Then again, the portion was quite big and came with all you can eat salad buffet. Which was only half salads and half cakes and cheese. So I don’t think I’ll need dinner today.

This I found in a bank. Inspiring

In the meantime the rain got really bad and I decided that I’ll start working on the second aim of this trip: enjoying solitude. I already have, of course, but now I could do only that. I went off road, found a ground road that led towards some farms, found a side path with a gate and stopped before it and its ‘private property’ sign. And opened a book. Whole three cars passed me in the next four hours. So good…

I moved before it got completely dark, heading towards the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge I want to visit tomorrow. Now I’m just stealing some internet from a McDonalds in Blackshear and will look for a quiet spot for the night. I think I’ll also try to wash my hair here. Never washed my hair in McDonald’s yet.