Day 1 – 12/17/07

12_17_07.gpx

Here’s the route for the first day out of Atlanta. We finally managed to get on the road about 2pm. It was later then I would have liked, but we had family in town for an early Christmas celebration and for Jay’s PhD graduation. So a late start was justifiable.

We hightailed it out of Atlanta on I-20 and just wanted to get across the border into AL. Once there, we started looking for a camping spot. I hadn’t had much time to do research before leaving the house, so we had to go by what the maps had marked. We ended up in Heflin, AL, near the Talledega National Forest. Unexpectedly, we had crossed into the Central Time Zone and so bought ourselves another hour.

We ended up grabbing a very belated lunch at Pop’s Charburgers which had apparently been in business since 1946. If it’s been around that long, it can’t be too bad, right? Apparently, they were written up in Southern Living for their milkshakes. That was music to Jay’s ears and we had to stop. I had a peanut butter shake and a “Big Pop combo” while Jay had a pineapple milkshake and the same combo. I’ve got to admit, their milkshakes were pretty darn good. Much better then the garden variety milkshake you would get at most fast food stops on the interstate.

Since we were so far on the eastern side of the CST zone, it got dark much sooner than we expected. We headed off to our chosen campsite, Coleman Lake, only to discover it was closed for the winter. We’ve since learned that it’s a pattern. Only the “primitive” campsites (without water and electricity) in National Forests stay open in winter. Too expensive to staff during low season, I guess. We backtracked a bit south and came to a horse camp. But since it was winter, there were no horses (or other people!) to be found and we had the entire place to ourselves. It was pretty dark by this point, so we just found ourselves a spot, cooked dinner, and crashed.

The only downer to the start of the trip was when Jay turned the headlights on as we got into Talledega after dark. Jay turned on the headlights and immediately smelled something burning. I couldn’t smell anything and was more intent on navigating, but he insisted he could smell something. About 5 miles later, I could smell a faint burning smell as well. Uh-oh. We eventually figured out that the instrument panel went dark when he turned the headlights on. We still had headlights and taillights, but no instrument panel. He speculated that it was something to do with his recent radio upgrade. Have to wait to find the true cause until we (he!) can take the dash apart and scope around to find the true cause.