Sunday, October 30th

Forsaken

The weather report last night had warned about frost and indeed, as I left the motel, the rear window of the car was frozen. But the sun was out and despite the low temperature of 38° it looked like it would be a fine day.

I drove off towards the northeast. In the town of Lanett, the road took a right turn at a traffic light, then a bridge and I was in Georgia. Which also meant that I was back in Eastern Time and it was suddenly one hour later.

I turned off the main highway and resumed my pattern of traveling along small side roads. At the junction with the Interstate, a black Ford Crown Victoria pulled in behind me. It had two additional lights in its front grill and was manned by two gentlemen with sunglasses drinking coffee from plastic cups. They turned off towards a resort called Callaway Gardens. Maybe there was an alien sighting.

Autumn had progressed quite a bit. This may have been the work of last nights frost. In the Northeast, they had had their first snow last night. Reports where of a lot of snow including power outages. The low pressure system I had been suffering Friday had happily mixed with more cold air and then descended over the Northeast.

I had been driving through farmland for quite a while now. After Milledgeville, though, I entered into mountains and more wild forests. The road was climbing. To its left and right there were several large pits of a kaolin mining operation. Sandersville, the larger town in the area, had a bit of a mountain town feel to it.

But soon thereafter, farmland re-appeared. This was mostly cotton fields having just been harvested. Large cylinders of compressed cotton were still laying around, waiting to be collected.

Outside of Sylvania, I turned onto US 301, a fast highway traveling northeast. There were lots of facilities on its side, but most of them were shut down, boarded up, and falling apart. One grocery store was still open, announcing to be the “last stop for Georgia Lotto.” A bit further on was the Georgia Welcome Center. Alas, it wasn’t very welcoming at all since it was closed on Sundays and Mondays. Given the complete lack of traffic along the road, this was understandable.

Around the next bend, the road finally climbed onto a large bridge across the Savannah River and into South Carolina. To its right there was still the old bridge, an metal turning bridge. The old highway dam was also still there — thanks to the lack of need to clean up in this utter wilderness. The landscape was a mixture of barren fields and forests. This felt like far up in the mountains somewhere.

South Carolina had its Welcome Center too, but it was not only shut, it also had the access roads thoroughly blocked. The first actual store in the new state, thus, was selling fireworks.

Allendale, the first town, picked up the theme of economic decay. Most of its stores were shut and falling apart. The only thing that seemed to still function were a few of the cities motels. There also was a impressive high school and a campus of the state university. In Ulmer, there was a large but closed way-side restaurant, a few miles on outside of town, there was another. This downturn seemed to have been going on for quite some time, though, perhaps since the opening of Interstate 95 running a lot closer to the coast.

The town of Bamberg had shut down factories at both of its ends, although the northern one by the looks of it had only recently been closed. There were a few stores around main street and they seemed to be open and clinging to life.

Another forty miles and I arrived in Orangeburg, today’s destination. It, too, was a college town but thankfully, there was no college football. I booked myself into a motel room within walking distance to a “casual dining” restaurant and, at the appropriate time, went there. But, this being South Carolina, I was informed that on Sundays they don’t serve alcohol. Dining with Coke, then.