December 28-30: Callaway Gardens, Ocmulgee Mounds National Monument and a Riverside Retreat in Uvalda, GA!

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There's something about putting up Christmas lights that can bring up feelings of nostalgia. The same way Halloween doesn't feel complete without a pumpkin carving, and Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving until you trace your hand on a piece of paper and call it a turkey, Christmas lights complete the holiday spirit in December. They look pretty and give your environs a beautiful, warm glow. But even more than that, they symbolize the beauty of the holiday season every year. The Christmas light show at Callaway Gardens has been rated in the top 10 of US Christmas light displays by National Geographic (and who knew that they even did that?) But it is NOT why we came to Callaway Gardens. This year, COVID-19 has severely restricted our annual anniversary trip---and we are okay with that, because, let's face it , we are both ALIVE, employed, doing well and last but not least TOGETHER to celebrate anniversary #9 in about 1 day hence. So we aren't complaining. But the impetus for this visit is rooted in travel restrictions and a childhood memory for me of FDR's Little White House (see prior blog post) and a visit I made to Callaway Garden as a teen with all the gardens in bloom and a water ski show on the lake. Not exactly what we saw, but... We arrived and stayed at the Lodge which is pretty much a nice hotel room with a larger than average bath. The grounds are not really a flowering paradise in December, but who thought they would be. They have been decorated with all these lights which are absolutely impressive, if a bit of a Cade's Cove type follow-the-bumper-of-the-car-ahead-affair. But pretty, for sure! But we did highly enjoy our 9+ mile walk around the entire complex on hiking trails/bike trails. We also enjoyed a nice visit to the butterfly center. Who doesn't love butterflies?

Photographing them is a challenge though! Like birds they are alway flitting branch to branch, bush to bush. But beautiful! We managed to walk around the entire Callaway properties. What we missed in cultivated gardens in December, we made up in solitude and some of the nicer features such as the lakes and the Ida Cason Chapel. Mr. Cason Callaway constructed these lovely gardens particularly known for their azaleas, off the proceeds of his mills.

It was a really nice long walk with several lake views included. Probably much more impressive in azalea season, but we enjoyed it even more barren in December. We have to make a few dining comments. The Piedmont Room at the lodge was "okay." The fare wasn't anything particularly special but it sufficed as a meal and was tasty. The breakfast buffet at $32 per person (and the only option on the resort) was nice but expensive for what two older adults can eat at brekkie. We went the second night to a tiny gem of rural restaurant called Carriage and Horses run by a Lebanese immigrant who was so personable and served steaks cooked to perfection. Don't let the location fool you. Although it doesn't look like much from the outside, this place is awesome and has a great wine list!

For our second breakfast, we avoided the excessive charges and ate at a really nice local coffee shop, Unique Expressions. In addition to the sales of local craft items, they serve an "all day" breakfast (until at least 2pm), have beautiful handmade pastries and have nice coffee, paninis and such. And it was $20 for 2 people instead of $64! What's not to love? Today we ventured closer to the site of our 9th anniversary on Sea Island, Georgia, but tried to pick a spot in-between Callaway and Sea Island for an overnight. On the way, we visited Ocmulgee Mounds National Monument. This is a hidden gem of a park run by the National Park service and chronicles the local Native Americans from the paleolithic period until driven out on their own personal trail of tears in the 19th century. The Creek Indians of local flavor have inhabited this area since way back there BC and are descendants of the Athabascans who crossed the Siberian regions so long ago the muskox forgot.

Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park has 17,000 years of human history. The Paleo-Indians first came to Middle Georgia during the Ice Age. The first people to this area were nomadic hunters and gathers who occupied this area for thousands of years. Around 1000 B.C.E they settled down into small villages growing crops of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Around 900 C.E a new culture arrived here known as the Mississippians. They were a complex society with a government and religious system. They constructed mounds here for their elite members of society. The Mississippian culture thrived here until Europeans arrived around 1600. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation today called this land their ancestral homeland "where they first settled down". There are numerous mounds throughout the park thought to be there for primarily ceremonial or practical purposes. PreCovid you could visit INSIDE the earthlodge, but now it's all external. There are about 8 miles of hiking trails around the earthlodge, the great mound and the funeral mound amongst others. The railroad actually destroyed some of the mounds when built in the 1800s and actually bisected one of the larger ceremonial structures. There are great walking trails through the mounds and beside the Ocmulgee River. They warned us about alligators on the trails, but in December, there were none.

From here it was off to our COVID conscious airbnb on the banks of the Oconee River in Uvalda, Georgia. Yep. We never heard of it either! But it is comfy and we are grateful. We highly recommend a visit to the Ocmulgee Mounds for anyone interested in Native AMerican culture and there is a nice visitor center which will likely reopen after the pandemic dies down.

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage." - Chief White Eagle 

Paul's Ponderings: We had a couple of great days at Callaway....particularly great weather versus home and we walked about 9-10 miles on our second day! I'd say the Piedmont dining room was "OK" but the place we went near Pine Mountain called "Carriage and Horses" was pretty darn great to be so rural! We had a Lebanese owner there with some excellent wine recommendations and a fine meal as part of it. The Indian mounds near Macon on the way to Uvalda were incredible....who knew? These are massive evidence of an ancient culture in this area and the monument area is nicely done. We spent the night in rural Georgia near Uvalde and finished up some excellent repurposed pasta from our experience a couple of nights ago with Luka in Atlanta. Salut!

December 24-29,2020: White Christmas, Hotlanta, and Points Forward

 

"I'm dreaming of a White Christmas..."

Paul and I trade out who plans our anniversary trip and this year...it's been a little wild. At first, I had plans for a foreign venue, but COVID made a big question mark that turned into a ZERO by fall. Then I planned a trip to Arizona (to help my hubby achieve his goal of having visited all 50 states), but COVID ixnayed that too. So instead, we are continuing our 2020 theme of car trips with lots of hiking, social distancing and visits to uncrowded spaces. And even that went a little haywire!  I got off work Christmas Eve and Paul and I planned to go to Chattanooga for the night, socially distant visit his sister and on to Atlanta. BUT it snowed and the road didn't get cleared and we ended up staying at home with our kitties. It was very beautiful in our yard. We didn't expect a white Christmas. The next morning, we were able to spend a little time with Paul's sister while on our way to Atlanta. 

And by the way, it was FREEZING. 25 degrees Fahrenheit when we reached Atlanta. We stayed in a nice midtown airbnb and literally walked in the garage/parking lot bundled up like Inuits because it was too danged cold to go anywhere else. For Christmas dinner, we had Indian food at Tabla. Not your usual fare, but tasty none the less!

Papadams and Chutneys

Paul toast everyone a Happy Christmas from our midtown airbnb

The next day, we were fortunate to do a civil rights tour of Atlanta with our guide, Runella. She is a transplant to Atlanta from Buffalo, NY but has family roots in the city. We went to the APEX museum (and were the only visitors), walked through Sweet Auburn, visited the outside of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and the outside of the MLK museum and his grave. We also saw the home he grew up in in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood. At that time, it was a very nice place and predominantly affluent and prominent blacks. This was during the Jim Crow era, and Sweet Auburn was a place where blacks owned businesses and could move freely about. Some of the Sweet Auburn neighborhood is in good condition, but much of it is sadly now in disrepair and there is a serious homeless problem as well. Our last stop on the tour was MLK's last home in another area of Atlanta. That home has been purchased by the park service and is undergoing renovation as a museum. It is not open to the public at present, and many place currently are closed that once were open. 

Martin Luther King's final home recently acquired by the park service

Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King's final resting place. 

The Municipal Market in Sweet Auburn. For the black community, they used to call this the "curb market"," because they couldn't go inside. 

We enjoyed a meal that night in Bacchanalia, a  perennial Atlanta favorite. The only reason it doesn't have a Michelin star is that Michelin doesn't come to Atlanta. If you are in Atlanta, go there. They are in a new location and it's very roomy. 

Same great food. New location. 

The next morning we were off to the High Museum. It's always on our favorites list. We saw a combination of European masters, contemporary art, sculpture, Persian works from the 19th and 20th century and the work of Julie Mehretu, an Ethiopian-American artist with extremely large and detailed works. 

Persian painting. I really like this painting from the very early 20th century. Big eyebrows are STILL all the rage. The amount of time the descendants from this period spend on their eye makeup is still astounding in the 20th century. 

Sculpture from Burkina Fossa

Julie Mehretu. These are large and multilayered works

Paul admires the work and gives you an idea of the scale. 

That night we had a private pasta class with Chef Luca in a midtown condo. We made pasta by hand and it was as fun as it was educational. 

Taglietelle. Handmade!

Paul Parris produces pasta!

Chef Luca is Ligurian and has worked in Atlanta and in Ethiopia. 

The next morning, we were off to the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. This modest home was a place of escape for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and also where he died. 

The Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia

FDR had his cars altered so he had hand controls. 

He came to "take the waters" of the 88 degree Fahrenheit springs and try to regain his strength after polio. He was a favorite of locals and was inspired to form the Rural Electric Administration and numerous other projects by seeing how local folks lived out in the rural and poor regions of this state.  

FDR looked for a cure from polio here, but didn't find it. He did however find better health and learned a lot about the rural poor. 

We are now staying at Callaway Gardens for a couple of days, and more on that later!

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

Paul's Ponderings:  Great trip so far.....we got a bit of a late start due to snow, but had a great time in Atlanta.   Besides some good food, we saw these fabulous works by Julie Mehretu at the High Museum.    I've never heard of her, but these were really interesting and the scale was huge.    We then drove on down to Warm Springs, which was new to me.....it's quite amazing how simple it is....no president would have a vacation home this simple these days.   By the time we got here, the weather was lovely and in the 60s.   Quite a change.    We ended the day by stopping at Calloway Gardens for a couple of nights.  

October 4-7,2020: Sleeping Bear Dunes

 

You can see the little dot of a human figure in the middle of the photo along the horizon. The dunes stand up to 100 feet in height. 

Sleeping Bear 

There was once, says the legend, a terrible fire or as

                       some will recount it a famine and
            a mother bear with her two cubs was driven

into the lake. They swam for many hours until the
                       smaller of the cubs began to weaken and,
            despite all the mother could do, was drowned,

then the second cub also, so when the mother reached
                       the shore which then as now belonged
           to a land of plenty she lay down with her face

to the shimmering span whose other side was quite
                       beyond her powers of return. The islands
           we call Manitou, the one and then the other, are

her cubs, she can see them, we go to them now by ferry.
                       And maybe that’s what we mean by
           recreation, not that everything lost—remember

the people to whom the legend belonged—shall be
                       restored but that it does us good
           to contemplate the evidence. The lake,

the dunes, the broken ships, the larger-than-we-are
                       skeins of time and substance in which
           change might be—we’ll think of it so hostile but a kindness..

Linda Gregerson (1950)

The Ojibwa legend is that a mother bear searched from the top of these dunes, now a national park and seashore, for her cubs. To console her, North and South Manitou Islands were formed to commemorate her lost children. We were also told that the native Americans thought the dunes looked like a sleeping bear as they passed them on the waters of Lake Michigan. No matter how they got the name, Sleeping Bear Dunes are a beautiful area with many stunning views of the ocean-like Lake Michigan. We were lucky to spend some time there with the lovely town of Glen Harbor as our base. 

Our lovely home compliments of Carl and airbnb. Just dandy!

The predominant attraction here is hiking, biking and enjoying the scenery and in our case, also the fall leaves in the  National Park area. 

Several deer greeted us when we arrived at our Airbnb in Glen Arbor!

The Pirate on the shores of Lake Michigan late in the day.

The Dunes are either bare or populated with fragile grasses. Note the turquoise color of Lake Michigan near shore in the background. The pale sands accented the blue colors of the sky and waters. Far in the background, the remaining Leelanau Peninsula stretches far into the lake.

There are "ghost forests" within the dunes. Trees that grow and flourish for a while are sometimes overcome by the sand and winds.

The dunes area was really windy the day we were out there. We had to stop and protect ourselves at times against the cutting sands that blew into our faces. Still, as you see, it is quite stark and beautiful. There are many places to see stunning views of Lake Michigan- deep blue and to the left on the horizon here. South Manitou Island is seen in the far horizon.

Climbing dunes, which is actually a bit challenging, is a favorite activity in the park. The most popular site is called unimaginatively, Dune Climb, and consists of a couple of miles climbing amongst the dunes. We opted for a less popular site a bit further away from the crowds called Sleeping Bear Point. It was a very windswept experience, but many great view of Lake Michigan, dune grasses and ghost forests. The end of this hike was through a white pine forest in a big loop. I wish I could transport the lovely aroma of those trees to anyone reading this but you will have to go experience that for yourself.

In the evening, finding a meal wasn't completely  challenging, but many places are closed Sunday through Tuesday (of course, while we were there!) in the "off season." We had some Detroit leftovers that sufficed in a pinch one night and we made breakfast in our Airbnb.  But we did find nice meals at Good Harbor Grill,  Blu and LeBecasse restaurants. Blu was a pricey and worth it French Bistro. Due to Covid, we had to eat outdoors, and although a bit blustery, a good coat, a heat lamp and a lovely sunset made it all right! LeBecasse which has been in nearby Maple City for over 40 years was also interestingly run by a French trained chef. It is located in a small house. Really nice food and great wine list as well. I think the waiter was drunk, but oh well! Still a little slice of eater heaven in a tiny little community. Who knew? 

This little restaurant in walking distance from our airbnb (really everything in Glen Arbor is walkable) serves mostly local lake fish, chili and such. The night we were there was "Italian takeover night." We were happy to find any food on  a Sunday night in the "off season." 

The outdoor seating at Blu. If in Glen Arbor, go there, even if you have to sit outside in the wind and darkness. Totally worth it.

LeBecasse in the very unassuming burg of Maple City. Open for over 40 years!

Sunset as observed from Restaurant Blu

We hiked many, many miles and probably gained weight due to all the great if limited dining options.

Our second day, we opted for a much longer loop hike called Platte Plains Loop Trail. This was a (mostly) gentle but lengthy sojourn through both pines and hardwoods and around a swampy lake area. At the end, it wandered out onto Lake Michigan for about a half mile of "on the beach" walking (and dodging waves!) This was much different than the dunes. We didn't see very many people at all except as we passed through the camping area. Nice hike. Again, great forest aromas. 

Platte Plains Loop is pretty flat and forested mostly. It was about 8 miles round trip.

We didn't see tons of wildlife. We did see nonpoisonous snakes, squirrels and this nice little frog.

This trail is exceptionally well signposted.

The portion along Lake Michigan. A less windy day and lovely clouds.

Warm enough that the pirate ditched his jacket. 

There are several wineries in Glen Arbor, but we only tried one-- Glen Arbor Wines. (Yeah, they aren't very inventive naming anything in this region!)  Currently, Michigan wineries are avoiding COVID transmission (in theory) by instead of offering a "tasting," offering a "flight" of 1 oz pours. Fine with me! Most offer anywhere from 3 to 5 wines in a "flight." At Glen Arbor, Paul ordered a flight of mostly reds and I ordered white and sparkling. Thusly, we managed to "taste" samples of most of their production. They had three sparklings, all of which were great, and an amazing ice wine. The chardonnay was so-so. 

One other good thing is that there was plenty of social distancing! Michigan seems to take slowing the spread of COVID very seriously. The pirate did EVENTUALLY remove his mask for a sip or two.

Our last day in the area, we decided to make a journey to the very end of the peninsula where the Grand Traverse lighthouse sits. 

The Leelanau peninsula extends a long finger into Lake Michigan on the extreme western coast of the lower part of the state.

The Airbnb owner suggested we visit a rural installation similar to Cades Cove called Port Oneida. This was quaint farmland and buildings Michigan style. They didn't look like Cades Cove but we understood the comparison. Some are still in use. From there, you can access Pyramid Point for a fantastic look at Lake Michigan!

Pyramid Point demands a little walk through the woods--most of it UPHILL on the way out.

We encountered wildflowers on every hike.

Pensive Pirate Paul considers the beauty of Lake Michigan and South Manitou Island from his perch on the sandy bluff at Pyramid Point. 

Port Oneida Farms Heritage Center is part of Sleeping Bear Dunes Park

From here, we made our way a bit further up the Peninsula to Whaleback Recreation Area. There is a conservation movement in the Leelanau Peninsula to buy and preserve public lands and this area is a part of it.

Part of the preserve

Lake Michigan and NORTH Manitou Island from a break in the trees. This was as good a view as we got of the North Island.

Vineyards beside the trail---private property but the trail was well marked.

We did finally make it out to the point to the Grand Traverse lighthouse which had Halloween decor about. We noticed that the state parks decorate heavily for Halloween here in Michigan!

Grand Traverse Lighthouse built in the mid-1800

Pirate Paul communing with a thin visitor to Leelanau State Park

On the way back, amidst all the Biden and Bye-Don and the Trump political signs, we did spot one  that was purely geographic and had to commemorate our arrival at this auspicious location.

Cool!

I do believe that nearly every yard in northern Michigan had a sign proclaiming their voting proclivity!

I haven't seen this one in Tennessee, but it was rampant in the Leelanau peninsula. 

But the good news is, we didn't come here for politics. We came here for to see Michigan-- or  at least part of it. And to celebrate the pirate's 59th birthday. Thank you Michigan for being a scenic and gracious host.

Si Quæris Peninsulam Amœnam Circumspice, "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you," which is the official state motto.

Paul's Ponderings:   We had a great time in this very diverse area.....the weather was pretty cooperative other than getting stung by sand and wind on the one hike on the dunes.   Unlike "urban Michigan", this area has always been a combination of tourism, farming, and perhaps a bit of logging.   So, the economic impact of the auto industry evolution is less evident here.    That said, Glen Arbor in particular is a lovely town and has the advantage of being hemmed in by the national park, which avoids too much growth.    In the end, we felt like we did the area justice and had a nice variety of experiences.   Perhaps we shall return one day....now it's on to Traverse City for a day as we sort of start our return homeward.