Drove my Chevy to the levee

Today, Monday, was the start of the road trip. We hired a Chevrolet Cobalt which might sound really grand to you Brits but in reality is virtually a Vauxhall Astra in disguise. Beth prepared a packed lunch for us to eat on our travels and we headed off about two in the afternoon. We both felt the sort of rush you used to feel when school was out for the summer - the freedom to go where the mood took us with no time constraints or pressures. We carried with us a strong feeling of euphoria.


That feeling lasted as long as it took to discover we had left Atlanta on the wrong road. Doh!

You’d think I’d know by now, wouldn’t you, not to trust my ageing memory but, no, off we went, Christian obediently following my directions. You want to know what made it worse? I was actually reading the map at the time! My finger was obediently drawing our progress along the road we should have been on but sadly the car was going in a different direction entirely.

Being men we couldn’t possibly turn back nor ask for directions but eventually got back on track. Glad we did really. Ended up driving across the top of Georgia through the Chattahoochee National Forest which was stunning. I’ve ridden my motorbike many times over the Swiss Alps, across most of France, across the Pyrenees mountain range and through Northern Italy. Been to the Lake District and to the lowlands of Scotland, although never the Highlands. In other words I have been lucky enough to see some pretty spectacular scenery in my travels but North Georgia can compete with them all.

According to the books we have we are in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains but if these are the foothills I am dying to find out how big the mountains proper are.

A first for me, though, is that these mountains are entirely covered in trees and being springtime are especially lush. All previous mountains have been as bald on top as Kojak.

Tomorrow the scenic stuff starts in earnest with a chance to call in to the Museum of Cherokees.

It’s easy to see as we are driving through the countryside just how vast United States really is, an impression I got when flying over it on Thursday. There are huge areas of land that have no property on them at all, just vast wildernesses. So what made them decide to build houses under the flight paths of incoming aeroplanes? I don’t get it.

But then I am equally curious to know why the ATMs at drive-in banks here have keys with Braille on them!

Or why the New Hampshire version of the twenty-five cents coin - a quarter - has their motto or slogan, “Live free or die” on it. Is that an option they’re giving you? Do you really have to choose one or the other?