Monday was a beautiful day and after the past 2 weeks of cold weather and rain Trey and I had to get out. We headed about 20 miles north to Lake Juliette to find the mysterious Rum Creek Wildlife Management Area. Google Maps has it completely wrong, where they label it to be is actually on the property of Georgia Power’s massive coal-fired power plant.
Turns out that Scherer Plant is the United States’ largest single point-source for carbon-dioxide emissions (a mere 25.3 million tons per year to be exact). In fact, in 2007 it was ranked 20th highest CO2 emitter in the world (out of 50,000 power plants worldwide)! Their ash ponds have also been of some concern after the disaster in East TN last year. I’ve been here in Macon for almost 18 months and no one told me that polluting, monstrosity was in my backyard.
Now I’m not one to dive into the whole global warming debate, but I do know that that much carbon-dioxide being emitted in one place can’t be good. Trey’s take on it was “I don’t like it. It puts smoke up and down and it hurts my eyes!” I agree, it is a bit of an eye sore in the middle of Lake Juliette.
After getting directions from GA Power’s friendly security guards we head to the south side of the lake and found a muddy road leading into the woods. The area doesn’t have any hiking trails and I couldn’t find a good map online anywhere (remember I said mysterious) so we just followed an old road into the woods to the lakeside. Trey had a blast playing with his toy digger/bulldozer on all the rocks covered in moss. He also continued to exercise his tree climbing talents (he’s getting good enough to keep his mother very concerned). We actually spent about 2 hours just hanging out in the woods before heading home. Fun times!
Blog posts were sparse over the past two weeks since Trey was in Florida with his grandparents. I came down a few days before Thanksgiving and on Friday Trey and I went to pick Heidi up at the airport. On the way there we took a little detour over to Weedon Island. In the 5 years I lived in Florida I never had a chance to visit that State nature preserve.
We followed one of its main trails onto boardwalks that led into mangroves in Tampa Bay. It was a beautiful day and Trey was excited to see some kayakers making their way through the salt water swamps.
Trey was even more excited when we met Heidi at the airport. He hadn’t seen her in two weeks and let out quite a squeal of joy!
It was a beautiful autumn day so we headed over to the Georgia Industrial Children’s Home to run around. I’ve got some friends who are engaged and asked me to take photos for them, so I was really out doing “location scouting” with Heidi and Trey as my models.
Today was my first day with Trey in over 3 weeks! I drove straight to Richmond after my plane landed in Atlanta yesterday and this morning he was thrilled and surprised to see me. Apparently he talked often during my absence about how Daddy would come to get him in a white car. As soon as he saw me this morning he went into a frenzied dialogue explaining to me all the things he had been doing with my mom at their house.
After some play time at my parents’ house this morning, we drove down the road to Echo Lake Park for a picnic lunch with my mom and brother Philip. After some fun on the playground we had lunch and then Trey and I walked the 3/4 mile trail around the lake.
My dad is a big history buff so I knew FDR’s Little White House in Warm Springs, GA was something he would love. It is Georgia’s most visited State Historic Site and rightly so as it has a great museum & facilities.
My brother Philip suffers from a disability that requires him to wear braces when he walks and he has to use a wheelchair when it comes to longer distances. It was neat to see the braces Roosevelt wore in his day (the best of the best at that time) and compare them to those Philip had on today. Medical science has made leaps and bounds in the last 70 years and Philip is much more comfortable thanks to that! In fact, even his wheel chair is 100x better than those Roosevelt used – who’d have thought you could improve so much on the simple concept of “wheel+chair” so much.
Labor Day is the only time of year when the pools that Roosevelt used during his time at Warm Springs are filled. The last time we visited the pools were empty, but today they had crystal clear, warm, spring water in them. Both Trey and Philip were very tempted to get in!
One advantage of having a Friends of Georgia State Parks membership is that you and 6 others get into any historic site for free. Today we saved $32 – that’s almost half of the cost of the annual membership! Don’t you want one?
Monday was a beautiful day and after the past 2 weeks of cold weather and rain Trey and I had to get out. We headed about 20 miles north to Lake Juliette to find the mysterious Rum Creek Wildlife Management Area. Google Maps has it completely wrong, where they label it to be is actually on the property of Georgia Power’s massive coal-fired power plant.
After getting directions from GA Power’s friendly security guards we head to the south side of the lake and found a muddy road leading into the woods. The area doesn’t have any hiking trails and I couldn’t find a good map online anywhere (remember I said mysterious) so we just followed an old road into the woods to the lakeside. Trey had a blast playing with his toy digger/bulldozer on all the rocks covered in moss. He also continued to exercise his tree climbing talents (he’s getting good enough to keep his mother very concerned). We actually spent about 2 hours just hanging out in the woods before heading home. Fun times!
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