Day 18 - Christmas Escape 2014 at DennyGibson.com

Day 18: January 8, 2014
What'll ya Have?
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In July I drove the Dixie Highway Southern Connector to get in position to drive the Old Spanish Trail and I drove the DH West Mainline from Chattanooga to where the Southern Connector departs just south of Macon, Georgia. That means that, since I spent the night in Byron, I was on previously driven pavement just a few miles from the motel. I did nothing special at that point but continued on the DH to Macon because that's what I had planned and that's what I had set in the GPS.

If things were normal, I might have taken to the expressway and headed home at this point. In fact, if things were normal, I might have reached this point yesterday or the day before and already be home or nearly so. But things aren't normal. It's cold. Extra cold. It was 15 Fahrenheit in Byron, Georgia, this morning. That's hardly inviting but it was more than 25 degrees colder than that in Cincinnati with wind and snow and other nasties. As cold as it is, where I'm at sounds better than where I'm going so I'm in no hurry to reach Cincinnati just like I was in no hurry to get here once words like "frigid", "bitter cold", and "sub-zero" started showing up in the weather reports for my home town. The semi-slow path of least resistance, it seemed to me, was to just keep on driving the Dixie.

As I was "rollin' down Highway 41" (a.k.a. Dixie Highway) in Macon, the Roadside America app on my GPS popped up an alert about the Allman Brothers Museum. I saw no markings and traffic was heavy so I missed it. However, in checking the alert, I learned that another Allman Brothers related site was nearby and headed there. What Roadside America calls Caged Party Graves is in Rose Hill Cemetery which is less than half a mile off of the DH. Allman Brothers Band members Duane Allman and Berry Oakley are buried side-by-side in similarly marked graves. Duane is on the photo's left. The two died about a year apart in motorcycle accidents neither of which involved peaches or watermelons. The last two pictures have nothing to do with the Allman Brothers. I've included them just to show the cemetery's challenging terrain and some of the structures built to overcome it.

I took advantage of being stopped at the cemetery to read through Roadside America's entry on the museum. It described it as being open only on weekends so, this being Thursday, I didn't even bother looking for it when I returned to the DH. I later took a look at the museum's own website and saw that their "weekends" run Thursday through Sunday so I might have been able to visit after all.

The good looking Monroe County courthouse is in Forsyth, Georgia, the town where Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus got their start.

I've know of The Varsity for a long time. I drove right by it in 2012 when I drove the DH Georgia Connector. It showed up there in 1928 which is about when the Dixie Highway officially retired. I wasn't expecting it that day and missed a chance to stop. Two days later, friend Don "Road Dog" Hatch, aware of my goof, called to let me know he was eating there at that very moment. A week or so ago, the Bremers, road fans from Indianapolis, had lunch there. They didn't call me directly but the did let me (and the rest of the world) know about it. Today I turned off the DH Mainline (US-19) and drove about a mile of the DH Georgia Connector (US-29) to enjoy a yellow dog all the way with strings and a Varsity Orange in my car. Next time I'll try inside. Oh, and in case you think I forgot something, fret not. I had a fried pie waiting for when I finished those fries... I mean strings.

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