Day 11 – Milledgeville Georgia

It was another hot day here in the Deep South. Nothing remarkable occurred this morning apart from me being accosted in the hotel lobby by a lady with a Zimmer frame asking me if I had a knife on me! To my embarrassment I had to confess that at that time I didn’t and it turned out that she needed one to open the bubble pack for her medication. After that brief frisson of excitement we left Greenville at about 10am and got back onto the Interstate with a mixture of religious and Country stations playing on the radio. The musical highspot, that we both sang along to, had to be someone singing that he liked the rain because the rain made the corn grow and the corn made the whisky and the whisky made his girlfriend “frisky”. I assume that was on one of the country stations as it didn’t sound very religious somehow. 

The journey was mainly uneventful. No armadillos among the roadkill today as far as we could see. The only thing out of the ordinary that we experienced was a stoppage due to a pick-pickup truck on fire on the hard shoulder with the fire department busy putting it out. Once we got past that, apart from the occasional roadworks, it was all plain sailing. We even managed to locate  “Q106.3 Middle Georgia Rock Station” on the radio. As they seemed to be locked into the same 70s/80s timewarp as us we happily rocked along with them for the rest of the journey.
Just about 200 miles out with about 50 miles to go we stopped at a gas station to swap over the driving. I looked in my backpack for something and made the heart-stopping discovery that I’d left a packet of papers with my passport in it back at the hotel in Greenville!! This was truly a senior moment, although in my defence I have to say that changing hotels every day and packing and unpacking does tend to get a bit disorientating after a while. It looked like we might have to turn back and do the 200 miles in reverse. I made a frantic phone call to the hotel (The Hampton Inn) and they couldn’t have been nicer. They told me they had my stuff safe before I’d even had chance to explain the problem and they are happy to hold on to it or send it on to me. Fortunately there’s nothing in the packet that I need at present so we can swing by and pick it up on the return leg. It will take us a bit out of our way but compared to the disaster it might have been, a few more hours on the road is a small price to pay.

We passed through Macon on the freeway at about 25 miles from Milledgeville and after a short while took a detour because Mark wanted to visit a place (or maybe I should say a plaice) called Haddock. I suppose it was appropriate given the seafood-related nature of the trip. It turned out to be quite a pretty little town with a gas station, antique shop, postal depot, bank and lots of well-kept houses by the side of the highway. The only thing that could have improved it would have been for the next town along to be called Chips. 

After Haddock we spent another 20 minutes or so getting to Milledgeville and our hotel. When we arrived the outside temperature was reading 93F. The hotel is another Hampton Inn which seems perfectly comfortable (although I was a little disconcerted that the desk clerk felt it necessary to thank us three times for choosing to stay with them during the course of a short conversation). There is a shopping mall nearby and a Longhorn Steakhouse so we opted to eat there tonight. After a starter of calamari for me and chicken for Mark (both of which came coated in sweet chilli sauce) we had a very decent steak each,  although once again the side orders left a little to be desired. I had the roasted carrots which came smothered in a sweet glaze and Mark’s spinach was lurking somewhere under a layer of cheese sauce. Only my asparagus, which would have been perfectly entitled to have come with melted butter or hollandaise sauce, managed to arrive untainted. However as it was our only meal today it went down very well. 

Following the meal we tottered back to the hotel, or rather, scampered across a four lane highway then tottered back. 

Our next stop is Charleston which is on the coast in South Carolina.