I traveled all day, and I’m still in Georgia.
I decided to make a few stops instead of just driving all day. First stop was Georgia State Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village. This was a very different kind of agriculture than what I knew. I grew up familiar with growing hay, corn, oats, and wheat. Others around us sometimes grew strawberries, potatoes and cabbage. But here in Georgia at the agriculture museum, they highlighted cotton, tobacco and turpentine.
I couldn’t help wondering what kinds of critters would be hiding between the those leaves.
Harvesting turpentine reminded me of harvesting for maple syrup. They slashed the pine trees and gathered the sap for turpentine and used some of the similar cups and taps used for maple syrup.
Behind the museum, there was a whole village of buildings. There were at least 10 costumed interpreters who were more than willing to talk to you all day. I wished I had the whole day to spend there instead of just a couple of hours.
The Grist Mill was an actual working, 134 year old grist mill. They would open the sluice to let the water run over the waterwheel, which turned the gears that turned stone against stone and ground the corn into either cornmeal or grits, depending on how close the stones where to each other.
They also had bins in the back for ground and un-ground corn. Apparently the men folk liked to gather at the grist mill and some would fish in pond. When they caught a big one, they would trace an outline on the cover of the bin and name and date it.
And one final photo from the museum is of this old farmhouse. It’s built like 2 separate buildings but with a common roof creating a “breezeway” between the two parts. I was familiar with the term breezeway, but up north it was usually enclosed. But this breezeway actually let the breeze flow through the house to keep it cool. It was also called a “dog trot” because the dog could trot from the front to the back of the house without having to go through it. We need one of these for our house because when Pumpkin is in the backyard, he always hears a dog out front and has to run back through to the front.
Spending this much time at the museum put me at the outskirts of Atlanta at about 3pm. After 3pm is not a good time to travel through Atlanta, but add to that the fact that it was a Friday afternoon, and the start of Memorial Day weekend, and the last day of school for all the kids in Atlanta. There were traffic jams on every route and outer belt. A one hour trip took me three hours. It was such a relief to finally pull into my campground.
Tonight I’m at Harvest Moon RV Park. The terrain is changing and it looks like the outskirts of the Smokey Mountains with the blue, hazy mountains off in the distance.