Hello? . . .hello? Is Anyone Here?

The truck and trailer. Pristine and primed for the road.

I'm ashamed to admit that it's been a month and a half since I last posted. My only excuse is that it has been a very intensive time.

As I've written before, I have a contract with my publisher, W.W. Norton of New York, to do a second edition of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

In 2016 I traveled nearly 11,000 miles to explore the nooks and crannies of Georgia's backroads. I visited old mills, covered bridges, courthouses, old churches, and historic houses without number, and whatever else caught my fancy. And then I organized it all into fifteen driving tours, suitable for a day trip or a weekend, in various parts of the state. Each tour was carefully mapped out with precise driving directions and information about points of interest. 

In order to do a second edition, it was necessary to re-drive each tour, making sure each point of interest was still there and that my directions were accurate. (To my shame, I found a few that weren't.) In addition, I wanted to expand some of the tours, and the editor had also asked me to create one completely new tour for the new edition.

As some readers might remember (assuming I still have any) my wife and I began living in an RV full time last January. The RV dealer delivered our fifth-wheel trailer to our site at a campground near Chattanooga, we moved into it, and there it sat until July. Meanwhile, my wife had two surgeries (which had been planned for some time), and we replaced our Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck with a Ram 3500 diesel -- a truck capable of pulling just about any rig we might ever own.

We decided that the most practical way to revisit the various tours would be to pull the camper to a location that was reasonably central to several tours and set up at a campground or state park. For instance, by camping at A.H. Stevens State Park at Crawfordville, I could retrace the routes for chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9, all in east central Georgia. From a campground north of Darian I could drive the routes for chapters 11 and 12 on the southeast coast.

So, on July third, we hooked the truck (aka "The Mighty Beast") to our trailer and hit the road. (To be continued.)

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone