Old Train Stations

If you're driving west along US-84 from Waycross, you'll reach the small town of Argyle. If you look to the left through the trees, you might see an interesting looking structure:

If you go into the woods, you'll discover the old Argyle train station.

It was moved to this location for some unknown reason. (You can tell because it's facing *away* from the tracks instead of towards them, and because it is on new concrete blocks.)

I'm not sure how long it has been here...
but no one is doing anything with it.

If you continue heading west, you'll reach Homerville.

The old Homerville train station is still in its original location...

...although it, too, is in decay and no one is doing anything with it.

On the edge of the Okefenokee: a JPG submission

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of the Okefenokee Swamp and the surrounding swamplands of southeastern Georgia. One of the themes for Issue 15 of JPG Magazine is favorite surroundings. The above shot is my favorite Okefenokee related images. As always, I'd love your vote... either click here or on the photo above! Thanks so much :-)

Islam and Politics in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

It's fifteen minutes long, but you should definitely watch it - I found it absolutely fascinating.

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Check out Move Your BODy (MYBOD), run by a good friend of mine.
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Okefenokee!

Yesterday afternoon, my mom, aunt and I drove down to Folkston, GA to visit the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. We just missed the 2:30 boat tour, so we spent the first hour exploring the visitors' center and hiking the short trail along the Suwannee Canal. (This canal was dug in the late 1800s when someone had the absurd idea of digging a canal to drain the swamp into the St. Mary's river. After digging something like 12 miles of canal at great expense, they realized that the swamp was - however slowly - flowing in the OTHER directions, towards the Suwannee River. Whoops.) Anyhow, the hiking trail takes you Mizell Prairie, which is quite scenic:

The 3:30 boat tour is the last tour of the day (unless you reserve a special sunset tour). It takes you down the Suwanee Canal and into one of the larger prairies and lasts about 90 minutes. We saw alligators, herons, egrets and sandhill cranes. Below are a few of my photos; the full photoset can be seen here.

This is the dock in front of the visitors' center.


Alligator!


The Okefenokee is very colorful in the fall.


Tree-island reflection


The sandhill cranes weren't very cooperative when it came to posing; this was the best sandhill shot I got. (Gwen - this is what we saw last time we were here!)


Taking the Suwannee Canal back towards the Visitors' Center

After disembarking from the tour, we ate at the small cafe located next to the Okefenokee Adventures gift shop (right next to the dock, you can't miss it). The food was yummy, fresh and cheap. Excellent! We had chosen yesterday to venture down to the swamp as they were having their annual Chesser Island Christmas... which involved the decorating of the Chesser Island Homestead in allegedly period holiday decor, and providing free refreshments and live music. Yes, we went for the free refreshments. I snagged some yummy freshly baked cookies. I wasn't too excited by the music. I was expecting Christmas carols. Now, I'm not particularly into Christmas, but carols are songs everyone knows, and I wouldn't have minded standing around the bonfire, caroling. Instead there was some crazy woman who sang a very animated song about shooting an armadillo. I wish I had remembered that my camera takes audio (minus video); I didn't make a video of it because it was too dark by that point. Also, at first I thought it was going to be a love-the-wild-creatures kind of song, instead of "Blast that aaaaaaaarmadillllllooooooooooo! Put him in the ground!" I would just like to state for the record that I am against the killing of armadillos. Also, if you see one in the road when you're driving, don't try to straddle it to avoid killing it. Its defense mechanism is to jump when it is threatened (its skin/shell is quite tough; it could totally knock a predator out), and it will likely splatter itself all over the undercarriage of your car. So swerve around the little guy. There. I've done my part to counteract the crazy anti-armadillo woman.

Remember to check out my full photoset from the swamp!

The dark and seedy underbelly

The latest theme over at JPG Magazine is Noir: the dark and seedy underbelly. I've actually uploaded a picture of a dead dog. I know that a lot of you probably don't want to see such a thing (although I think it's a damn good shot, myself), so I'm not posting the photo here. However, if you've got a strong stomach, I'd love your vote... so click here! :-)

Something cool for travelers and/or photographers

If you love photography and/or travel, you should definitely check out Everywhere Magazine. It was created by the same people who created JPG Magazine, and it operates on the same principle: User Created Content. You can upload photos, stories, or simply names and locations of interesting places. I've been uploading as much as possible (you're limited to 20 photos per day) since in a little more than three weeks I will be in the land of spotty internet. My Everywhere travelogue is here, if you're interested. Sadly the themes for Issue 2 of the magazine (which is published as a full color magazine on high quality paper) are Los Angeles, Places Reborn, Turkey, and Hotel Bars, for which I don't really have any submissions. (Here's hoping they choose Russia and South Korea at some point!) Anyway, I definitely recommend the site... it's tons of fun. And if your photo or story gets published, you'll receive $100 plus a free subscription to the magazine! (If you create a travelogue, please send me the link.)

Doggie Day

Mom and I took the three mutts (whom we are calling Brownie, Blackie and Brinny, as we've run out of name ideas) to the vet today. They are generally healthy. Emaciated and wormy, yes, and Blackie and Brownie had fevers, but there were no serious illnesses like heartworm or parvo or mange or anything. Since Brinny didn't have a fever, he got his initial shots, but the other two have to get theirs after their fevers go down (they're on antibiotics now). After we took them home I washed them, then we wormed them and gave them their meds and Advantage... I was thoroughly filthy by the time we were finished. I took some decent pictures of the three of them... so if any of you are interested in a dog, let me know. (The vet says they're probably about six months old.)

Blackie (male, 6 mo)

Brownie (female, 6 mo)

Brinny (male, 6 mo)

Doggone it!

This afternoon I decided to take a dirt road west past Ruskin to investigate a small cemetery which I'd noticed when my dad and I were driving around last weekend. It's a small cemetery, with a couple of stones from the late 1800s, but most from the early to mid 1900s - although there were a few fairly recent graves, contrasting with others marked solely with crosses, containing no dates, and a couple which had caved in! I got one distance shot, but didn't really have the opportunity to explore the place fully.

I was wading through the high grass toward those stones you see there to the left when I heard the most menacing barking and growling coming from the woods. I uttered Oh, shit! and began heading for my car, when the vicious noises emerged as three fairly young, emaciated mutts. At first they were quite intimidating, and I was quite concerned that they would get to me before I could get to the car... and how fitting that my corpse would already be in the graveyard. Well, I began speaking to them nicely, and they immediately transformed from terrifying beasts into the sweetest, friendliest mutts imaginable. I tried to continue exploring the cemetery, but with three exuberant beasts, I ended up with little more than shots like these:

Look how skinny she is!

He was begging me to take him home...

There were three of them - a black male, a brindle male and a brown female - all nondescript mutts, all thoroughly emaciated, and all incredibly sweet. I really, really, really did not want to bring them home with me. Really. But I didn't think I could just leave them out there either. So I took them to my mom's house. (The fence around my yard has numerous holes; the dogs would be out in an instant.) Obviously, she's not too excited about adding three dogs to the three she already had (in addition to her 15 cats!), but luckily these guys not only don't chase cats, but they get along well with her dogs. Tomorrow I get to take them to the vet to see if there is anything seriously wrong with them, and if not, get them vaccinated and wormed and whatnot. We estimate that they're six to eight months old - definitely less than a year - so they'll probably get a little bigger. They're totally nondescript mutts, but very sweet... so if you or anyone you know would like to adopt a dog, please let me know! In the interim, I've been tasked with getting mom's new land fenced in so we can see about relocating some of these beasts!

My father's visit and my trip with my mom to the range and the swamp

My dad drove up to Waycross from Tampa on Friday. That in itself is a long drive; the last time I did it, I took an hour and a half nap in my car in a rest area. But he didn't just drive any old thing, he drove up in his new Harley. I can't imagine seven hours one way on a motorcycle, although perhaps that's why I drive an Echo. The two little boys who live next door for me, and who are usually completely fascinated by me and everything I do were overwhelmed with interest in my dad and his motorcycle:

I feel bad for these kids. They are so sweet and super cute, but I don't think anyone pays any attention to them whatsoever. Their family is incredibly poor, and the mom seems much more interested in her boyfriends (she has at least two) than in her three kids (she has a toddler, too). The kid on the right has some kind of speech defect and/or learning disability, but I suspect nothing is being done about it. We asked if they had a football, but all they had was a flat basketball, so later when we went to Wal-Mart, my dad bought a football for me to give them for Christmas.

Here I am trying to look like a kickass biker chick...
Instead I just look crazy.

While most of my cats were totally freaked out by the arrival of A Strange Person in their house, Alley Cat, Daddy Cat and Mia (!) all seemed to enjoy his company:

Dad and Alley Cat

Dad, Daddy Cat and Alley Cat

Dad and Mia!

I wish I'd had my camera out... Daddy Cat tried to go out the cat door and GOT STUCK! His ass is too big to fit through the cat door. It was like Winnie the Pooh trying unsuccessfully to leave Rabbit's house; his rear was bulging and his little legs were just kicking in the air. Poor guy. It was totally the funniest thing I'd seen in a long while.


We went out to mom's land, and found a deer jaw!
Just like old times :-)

Dad left this morning to make that long drive back down to Tampa, and then my mom came and picked me up to take me to the shooting range. She has a Taurus 22 Magnum Revolver, which she hasn't had much of an opportunity to shoot. A coworker of hers and his wife go to the shooting range regularly, and they invited us to go along with them, so they could help mom get used to using her gun. That gun has as opposite of a hair trigger as you can get - I could barely fire it! Anyway, I took a TON of photographs, as usual. Three are below, but the entire set can be viewed by clicking here.

Ear plugs are a necessity!

Mom shoots!

Mom's coworker brought quite a few guns.

After leaving the range, we decided that since it was such a beautiful day (and crazy uncharacteristically warm for December - even this far south), we decided to go try to find Hopkins. Hopkins used to be a small community located on the north-western edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. It no longer exists, although we've been told that there are still remains which can be found. We'd tried to go out there last month, but the roads were too muddy for either of our little cars. The roads were definitely drier and passable today, but we did have some trouble finding the road we needed, Old Hopkins Road. Instead of a street sign, there was a paper plate tacked to a power-pole with the road's name written on it in marker. And of course, the first time it rained, that plate folded itself in half. We did, however, successfully find the road. Then we managed to get completely lost in the midst of the woodlands bordering the Okefenokee National Wildlife Reserve. The first road we tried (which turned out to be Old Hopkins Road) descended into a swampy area that we figured we probably shouldn't drive the Ford Escort into. After that, we drove down an innumerable succession of small dirt road through the woods. The lands bordering the wildlife reserve are all owned by hunting clubs, and eventually we stumbled upon a hunting party - a crew of rednecks straight out of the cast of Deliverance, but very friendly - who gave us nearly incomprehensible directions for how to get back out to a paved road. We never did find Hopkins.

Mom examines the "road sign" for Old Hopkins Road


This was where we stopped driving, for obvious reasons.


It was the middle of nowhere!
(The figure in the distance is my mom.)


The edge of the Okefenokee!

We saw this along the paved highway on our way back to Waycross: