The Stovall Mill Covered Bridge

 The Stovall Mill Covered Bridge on Chickamauga Creek, White County, GA.  

One of the shortest covered bridges in Georgia, although not the shortest, is the Stovall Mill covered bridge on Chickamauga Creek in northeast Georgia's White County. At 38 feet in length, it is just four feet longer than the Lula Bridge, east of Lula, Georgia on a now non-existent road.

Built by Will Pardue in 1895, using a modified Queen post truss design, the bridge takes its name from Fred Stovall, who operated a nearby grist mill for many years. The bridge replaced an earlier one which washed away in the early 1890s. It was in daily use until 1959, when the road was relocated away from the bridge. It is also called Sautee Bridge, Nacoochee, Bridge, Chickamauga Bridge, and Helen Bridge, because of its proximity to the tourist town of Helen. Now owned and maintained by the White County Historical Society, it's just a quick 2.7-mile drive up GA 255 from the Old Sautee Store -- another place you don't want to miss if you're in the Helen area.

North Georgia has two Chickamauga Creeks, by the way. The one in northeast Georgia that flows under the Stovall Mill bridge is smaller and flows into the Chattahoochee River just a few miles south of the bridge. The Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia is a larger and longer stream, beginning in McLemore Cove just a few hundred yards from our former home, and flowing north, eventually joining the Tennessee River at Chattanooga.

(The Stovall Bridge photo is another Olympus OMD-E-M5 photo, this time made with the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 lens which stayed pretty much glued to one of my EM-5 bodies.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge

The last of the Horace King-built bridges in Georgia.

 From the 1840s to 1900 and even beyond, much of the traffic in the Deep South crossed its streams on wooden bridges built by the legendary Horace King, a master bridge builder who was actually a freed slave

The bridge over Red Oak Creek was built by King in the 1840s. It's Georgia’s oldest covered bridge, and at 391 feet, the longest, if one includes the approaches. The covered portion is about 140 feet long, using Town lattice construction with criss-crossed planks held together by approximately 2,500 wooden pegs. This is the last of King's bridges still in use in Georgia.

If you should happen to visit Albany, Georgia be sure to visit the Bridge House on Front Street, which King built in 1858, along with a bridge over the Flint River. The bridge was swept away by a flood in 1897, but the Bridge House still stands and is now the centerpiece of Riverfront Park and serves as Albany's Welcome Center.  

To get to the Red Oak Creek covered bridge, a good place to start is the courthouse square in Fayetteville. Go south 27 miles on GA 85 to the one-stoplight village of Gay. Nothing much happens in Gay, except on the first full weekends in May and October, in which case you may find yourself in the middle of a traffic jam as thousands flock to the Gay Cotton Pickin' Fair, an arts, crafts, and antiques festival on the old Gay family farm. An institution that dates back to 1972, the Cotton Pickin' Fair is one of the Southeast Tourism Society's Top Twenty Events.

From Gay, continue south on GA 85 for about five miles to the well-marked intersection with Covered Bridge Road on your left. Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge is about a mile back, and, unlike many old bridges, you can still drive on it.

(This is just one part of Tour Three, which you can read about and follow if you like, in my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia, now in its second edition. The covered bridge photo was made with an Olympus OMD-E-M5 digital camera, a delightfully small but very precise piece of equipment about the same size as my all-time favorite, the Olympus OM-2n film camera.) 

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone

McLemore Cove in the Mist

McLemore Cove. Mist in the valley below Pigeon Mountain.

We lived in McLemore Cove for 33 years and were surrounded by a varied palate of beauty every day. With Lookout Mountain on our west and Pigeon Mountain on the east, we had a ringside seat for an ongoing performance of land, sky, and weather.

This is the driveway to the home of our neighbor, George David Queener. You can see a bit of his house at the far right side of the photograph. George and his wife Mary Ellen owned the GDQ Ranch, with about 850 acres and 350 head of purebred cattle. They sold us our land, just a tiny slice off their empire, and were good neighbors. George was known as a man of hot temper, but we seemed to stay in his good graces.

The Cove is thinly populated, with many large farms. Sometimes it could be a bit lonely, especially for Louise, but she joined other Cove women for a weekly Bible study at the Community Center and made many friends there. The Cove people were always sweet-natured, neighborly and helpful. 

We're gone from the Cove now, and happy where we are. But we miss the Cove and our friends there and will always have fond memories of the life we built in McLemore Cove. 

(I don't remember the camera I used for this photo, nor exactly when I made it. Probably the late '90s. But it was on film, which was certainly Fujichrome, and the camera was most probably a Canon EOS A2.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Way It Used to Be

The Old Mill at Pigeon Forge as it looked in the early 1970s.

 A favorite weekend getaway for the young Jenkins family in the early 1970s was the Pigeon Forge -- Gatlinburg area. We always stayed in Pigeon Forge, because the motels were cheaper and the town was much less crowded, even then.

Built in 1830 by Isaac Love and his sons, the mill has had an interesting history. In addition to grinding meal, it has powered looms to make uniforms for local Union soldier volunteers (East Tennesseans substantially supported the North during the Civil War), powered a sawmill, and ran a generator to provide electricity for part of Pigeon Forge. Nowadays it houses a restaurant and gift shop.

The mill looks much the same today, but may be a little hard to find in the amazing clutter of restaurants, hotels, stores, and tourist traps that make up present day Pigeon Forge. I'm glad we were able to enjoy the town before it became a massive traffic jam. 

Even as far back as 1985 the traffic had already gotten out of hand. One October weekend we went to Knoxville to visit our son Rob and his wife Bonnie. He was working on his master's degree at the University of Tennessee at the time. Saturday morning it was decided that we would go to Gatlinburg. It took us nearly four hours to go the four or five miles from Sevierville to Pigeon Forge! Since then, we have avoided going to the area on weekends. Now, even weekdays are one endless jam-up.

We camped at a small campground near Pigeon Forge for three weeks last summer (2022). Our campsite was in my opinion the nicest we've ever had. But leaving the campground to go anywhere was a major chore. We won't go there again.

I'm glad I can remember the old mill and Pigeon Forge the way they used to be.

(The photo was made on Kodachrome film, but I have no idea what camera I used. Most likely, a Nikkormat.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Beyond the Cell Phone Camera

David and assistant. St. Mark's Square, Venice.

If your interest in photography is growing and you are beginning to discover that a cell phone camera doesn't always allow you to make the pictures you want to make, then maybe it's time to think about moving up to something more capable. Like a real camera, with different lenses and all that. 

But perhaps you're worried that it will be too complicated and expensive. If you read photography blogs and web sites that talk about equipment, you have probably noticed that most of them are telling you that the only way to go is to buy top-of-the-line cameras and lenses. Don't believe them. The photos in this post were made by Louise on our Italy trip in 2005, using a tiny Olympus point-and-shoot camera with a zoom lens.

Admittedly, point-and-shoot cameras are pretty much out of the picture these days (see what I did there?), but you can get a good camera for not much more than we paid for her little camera back in the day. Amazon sells a Canon EOS Rebel T7 with two zoom lenses for $499. Nikon sells a similar outfit for a little more money. 

Both these cameras are capable picture-takers and will allow you to do about anything you want to do. If I needed to, I could make my living with either of these cameras and their lenses. In fact, every photo in my Backroads and Byways of Georgia and Rock City Barns books could have been made with either of these cameras.

And if you're afraid they will be too complicated for you to use, fear not. They have fully automatic modes that will enable you to snap away while you're learning to use the settings.

Here are a few more of Louise's pictures from our Italy trip.

Gondolas in Venice

Vernazza, in the Cinque Terra

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography copyright Louise D. Jenkins, text copyright David B Jenkins, 2023 

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Mission to El Salvador: The People

Ahuachapan, the place chosen for our mission is a busy city of about one hundred thousand in the mountains of western El Salvador. It is quite Americanized, but by our standards, most of the people are poor. Some are very poor by any standard.

But life goes on. Mothers take their children to the park to play.

 

And young lovers are as young lovers have always been everywhere.

 

 The people of El Salvador are mostly friendly and welcoming.

 

 

 But it is a country of deep spiritual need. 

 The people bear heavy burdens. Both physical and spiritual.

 

 

More and more Salvadorans are turning from the centuries-old traditions of Roman Catholicism to evangelical churches, where they are finding new life in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

 If you would like to view the audio-visual program I created from our trip, click here.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Mission to El Salvador: Reaching/Teaching the Kids

Lots of fun, games, and singing at the children's Bible school.

One of the most important parts of the mission was a Bible school for the children, held every afternoon. Our team included people with extensive experience in conducting Daily Vacation Bible Schools in their home churches. Several local young people helped with translation, but things went smoothly despite the language difference. The kids had fun, and that does a lot to override language barriers.

La Colonia Gloria Methodist Church

The location for the Bible School was La Colonia Gloria Methodist Church, the smallest and poorest of the Methodist churches in Ahuachapan. A small, concrete block and plaster building with a dirt floor, the steps up to the entrance were tree roots! But as the saying goes, it's what inside that counts!

And what was inside was a group of eager, enthusiastic kids, ready to listen.

 

 There was lots of singing, led by Salvadoran Christian young people. . .

And then it was lesson time.

And then again, time for more fun!

 

If you would like to view the audio-visual program I created from our trip, click here.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Mission to El Salvador: The Clinic

 Louise checks out a young patient.

One of the most important aspects of the El Salvador mission was the clinic, providing care for people so poor most of them had never seen a doctor. The clinic was set up in a small house on the hill above the tiny Gloria Church, in the home of the pastor. As the only Nurse Practitioner on the team, Louise was in charge of the clinic.

She led a team of two Salvadoran nurses and one American nurse who was part of the mission group. They did preliminary screening of the patients before bringing them in to see Louise.

Team member Jason Denson discovered a previously unknown aptitude, and after a slightly difficult first day as he learned how to organize his workflow, quickly developed into an accomplished pharmacy technician. Almost all the patients had intestinal parasites as a result of drinking contaminated water -- for most, the only water available.

 Pastor and team leader Chris Mullis prayed with each patient.

They came in all ages and sizes . . .the very young . . .

The very old . . .

 

The happy . . .

And the unhappy.

All photographs on the El Salvador trip were made with a pair of Olympus OMD-E-M5 micro 4/3s cameras. The most-used lens was a Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. All photos were made with the natural light as I found it.

If you're interested in viewing the audio-visual program I created from our trip, click here.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Mission to El Salvador: The Children

Little girl in the central marketplace of Ataca,El Salvador

In 2014, Louise and I participated in a mission trip to El Salvador sponsored by the North Georgia Conference of United Methodists. Louise and I were not Methodists, but she was the Music Director at the Chickamauga church (one of her many abilities), so that's where we went to church. And of course, we were always up for a mission trip.

The community selected for our mission was Colonia Gloria, one of the poorest sections of Ahuachapan, a busy city of about one hundred thousand people in the mountains of western El Salvador. Louise's job was to hold daily medical clinics in a local pastor's house, while my role was to document the trip with my cameras. Several members of our team, including another nurse, assisted Louise with the clinic, while other team members held a daily Vacation Bible School in a small Methodist church in the community.

I'll write more about the trip in coming days, but for now, I just want you to see the innocence of these children of El Salvador. Innocence that they, sadly, will soon outgrow.

 

 

All photographs on the El Salvador trip were made with a pair of Olympus OMD-E-M5 micro 4/3s cameras. The most-used lens was a Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. All photos were made with the natural light as I found it.

If you're interested in viewing the audio-visual program I created from our trip, click here.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Log-Rolling Contest

You think you wanna challenge me?

I've written about my brother Phil before and posted one of his eagle pictures. He's semi-retired now, but he had a long career with the U.S. Government as -- seriously -- a rocket scientist. In other words, he's pretty smart.

Some years back Phil and his wife Erin began photographing wildlife and birds in the backwaters of the Tennessee River near their home in Huntsville, Alabama. They both have excellent Canon cameras and some long, long lenses. Here's what Phil has to say about this series of pictures.

"I never got any interesting coot pictures until one day last December. We were watching an eagle nest for action and my wife & I also keep an eye on the little bay by the nest watching for other wildlife. There was a flock of coots floating around doing the usual but nothing interesting until this log came floating up. One coot decided he would have a go at climbing up on the log and was quickly joined by a second coot. That is when the log rolling contest began. They could not seem to stand on the log for long before it started rolling. They did their best but in short order one coot or both were back in the water. They quickly climbed back up and the contest was on again."

Let the contest begin!

The log-rolling contest is on!

You gonna give up, or do we have to keep doing this?

The champ takes a break.

I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did.

Louise has been out shopping today and bought a new chair for our guest bedroom.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 Philip N.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Are Family Pictures Important?

 Our Christmas Dinner, 1973

A few days ago my daughter-in-law, Kim, sent me an old picture postcard from the early 1960s. The photo showed a family at the beach, and the caption said "If you don't think photos are important, wait until they are all you have left."

Back in the 1980s, Louise and I went to a party at a friend's house. After we had eaten, we sat down to play party games. One of the games was to list three things we would take out of our house if it were on fire. Pictures were on everyone's list, and they were number one on at least half the lists.

It wasn't convenient to set my camera on a tripod that Christmas Day in 1973, set up a flash on a separate stand, focus the camera (no auto-focus in those days), then set the self-timer and hurry back to my place at the table. Rinse and repeat. But I did it, and now we will always have a picture to remind us of a happy time in our lives. Louise was in nursing school, and I was about a year into a new career at Continental Film Productions. We had come through a few difficult years, but now things were looking up for the Jenkins. We dressed up, even though there was no one there but us, because it was a day to celebrate.

While you're looking, please notice the decor. It's dated now, of course, but Louise has always had a gift for making every place we've ever lived a warm, homey home. That's another thing I enjoy remembering when I look at this picture.

Preaching again, I know. But listen to your elders. Make prints!

(This picture was originally square, so it was probably made with a Yashica or Rolleicord twin-lens reflex. The film was color negative.)

Louise has been busy all day home-making in our new home.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Bridge to Nowhere

Howard's Covered Bridge in Oglethorpe County, Georgia

My travels around Georgia have led me to many remote and lonely places, but probably none more so than this old bridge.

Just off a gravel road in a seldom-traveled area of northeast Georgia sits Howard's Covered Bridge. Built in 1904 across Big Cloud Creek in an isolated part of Oglethorpe County, the bridge is 164 feet long and built with Town Lattice Truss construction, with timbers fastened together with wooden pegs. The original builder was probably J. M. "Pink" Hunt. Built with convict labor and named for a pioneer family that settled in the area in the 1700s, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and restored in 1998.

The bridge is still maintained, probably by the county or the state, and appears to be usable, but no one uses it now, and probably not for a long time. My research does not turn up any information about the road at the other end of the bridge, or where it led. It has long ago been obliterated.

Howard's Covered Bridge is truly the bridge to nowhere.

(The camera was an Olympus OMD-EM5, with a Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm-II f3.5-5.6 lens -- a very useful lens that pretty much stayed glued on that camera.)

Louise went to church today for the first time since her injury.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Do Your Photos Really Exist?

 Donny at the photo tree, about 1973.

In the early 1970s we lived in a small house on the outskirts of Chattanooga. It had a large yard, however, and in the front yard was a beautiful poplar tree with four trunks. I called it my photo tree, and it was the backdrop for numerous photographs of my family and friends. Especially my family.

This is our second son, Donny. He was four or five at the time. Today, he's almost 55 and is a successful businessman who owns his own business in an extremely difficult and competitive field. (We don't call him Donny any more!) He's the father of Devlin, who is a student at the University of Tennessee, and Marlee, who just graduated from high school. She's the dancer whose pictures you've seen several times if you've been following this blog.

This picture is precious to me, as are all the photographs I've made of my family.My point is, this picture exists because I took the time and trouble to make it. I used a real camera, with black and white film, developed the film, and made the print in a darkroom. It wasn't convenient, but it was worth the effort.

Things are much different now. You can snap away with the little camera in your cell phone to your hearts content. But what will happen to those precious (and some not so precious, of course) photographs? You can save them to the cloud, of course, and you can download them to your computer. In either case, they have no real existence. They are nothing but collections of electrical impulses.

I'm not suggesting you get a film camera. But what about sending the best of those files to one of the many online services that will make prints from them? Prints that have actual existence. Prints you can put in an album for your family to cherish decades from now?

I know I keep beating this drum, but take my advice. Take a little time and trouble. Your kids, and maybe your grandkids, even great-grandkids will be glad you did.

(The camera, as best I remember, was a 35mm Pentax SV with a 50mm Takumar lens. The film was probably whatever I could buy cheap at the time.)

Louise continues to do well. We're working on finding a dental specialist who can readjust her bite.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.