The Highways Traveled

I have been many times to all of the states in southeastern US. That is especially true for Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. And this trip was yet once more there. The purpose of this trip was mainly three reasons: 1. Photographing four dozen college signs towards my goal of photographing over 250 of them by the end of 2019 2. Visit some more national parks, am getting close to 150 of the just over 400 of them 3. Meet up with two friends in Georgia and two friends in Florida

MISSOURI: Only two stops in Missouri, both to photograph the signs at two univeirsities. Interestingly, the two stops in the state were the bookends of my entire trip. Cape Girardeau was my first stop and Rolla was my last stop. With these two, that completes the phographing of all four-year colleges in the state (although there may be some very small schools somewhere I have never heard of or are private schools, example is Fontebonne University in St. Louis that I just happened to drive by but otherwise had never heard of it). The northern part of the state still had winter colors whereas spring blooms had arrived in Cape Girardeau.
ILLINOIS: I was in Illinois only a short distance while driving between Cape Girardeau MO and Kentucky across from Cairo IL. I was surprised how swampy the area is.
KENTUCKY: Only in just a small section of the state on this trip. More will will covered during a trip two months later. This time it was going to Western Kentucky University and nearby Mammoth Cave National Park. A light layer of snow covered most all of the area I saw. It looked absolutely gorgeous shimmering on the trees with the fall colors and the sunshine.
TENNESSEE: My birth and childhood state. Yet once more drive the long and mountainous drive between Nashville and Knoxville which is also where the time zone line is. For the first time, I stopped in the area north of Nashville: Fort Donelson Battlefield National Park, Clarksville for Austin Peay University, three universities in Nashville (of which two are little heard about), and, Middle Tennessee State University just south of Nashville. In the eastern part of the state I wanted to photograph Neyland Stadium from a very good spot that I noticed using Google Street View. And in the western part of the state I stopped in the small town of Henderson (population 6,500) to visit the campus of Freed Hardeman University, This town is just 20 miles south south-east of where I grew up and a few miles east of Chickasaw State Park where my family often visited and even camped.
NORTH CAROLINA: This trip covered just a couple of places in the extreme western part of the state. One was a college town, Cullowhee, for West Carolina University. The other was the small town of Flat Rock which is the location of the home of famous poet Carl Sandburg. He was the first poet I learned about, and have already remembered, because it was very short 21 words, I never did gain an appreciation for poetry) and contained the word "cat" (I have always loved cats). The poem was called "Fog". The entire text of the poem is: "The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on." A trip planned in spring of 2019 I am calling The Blue Ridge Parkway Trip will cover much of North Carolina.
SOUTH CAROLINA: Four colleges visited in the western part of this state: Wofford College and South Carolina Upstate University in Spartanburg, Furman University in Greenville, Presbyterian College in Clinton, and, Clemson University in Clemson. The above-mentioned Blue Ridge Parkway trip will also cover much of this state.
GEORGIA: Seems like this state keeps finding reasons to draw me back. For this trip I covered much of the state including some places I was at just a few years ago (and did not know then to go to the college campuses. Three colleges in Atlanta: Emory, Georgia Tech and Georgia State. Also West Georgia in Carrollton, Mercer University in Macon and Georgia Southern in Statesboro. Also, a couple that I knew from Toastmasters -- they moved a few years ago from Wichita to Savannah -- I wanted to visit. When there, I learned that only she lives in Savannah and he is still in Wichita and is supposed to be selling the house.
FLORIDA: Like Georgia, this state also keeps drawing me back. For one, a good friend and former co-worker lives in Jacksonville (she moved there five years ago). This will be my fourth visit with her -- she lived in a different place each of the previous three visits but has worked for the same company since moving here). The other is the only high school classmate from Tennessee that I have still any contact with. This would have been my fourth visit with her in Orlando except that some family from Indiana unexpectedly arrived which cancelled our visit plans. The only national park to visit on this trip was to take the boat ride over to the fort at Fort Matanzas. However, hurricane damage from last year is still keeping the boats from running.
Many colleges in the state to visit this trip, many for the second time but this time I know where the campus signs are: Jacksonville University, Flagler College in St. Augustine, Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Stetson University in DeLand, Central Florida University in Orlando (they were undefeated in the most recent college football season, must to the glee of the alumni as I have been told by my former Tennessee classmate), Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida International University (two campuses) in Miami (which I really dreaded going back to after the trip a few years ago taking four hours just to get through town), Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers (another place I recently visited and did not know about this school), South Florida University and Tampa University in Tampa, University of Florida in Gainesville (repeating a recent visit), Florida State University and Florida A&M both in Tallahassee (repeating a recent visit to Florida State), and, West Florida University in Pensacola (which I was unable to actually drive to because of a two-hour delay with construction and rush-hour traffic and I would have needed another hour yet to get to the campus and I had many hours of driving ahead of me to go that day). This was also the first time I ever got to drive all the way across the Florida panhandle and visit Panama City.
ALABAMA: I was just in northwest Alabama (Tuscaloosa) a few months prior to this trip. This trip covered the rest of the state and its colleges: Southern Alabama University in Mobile, Troy University in Troy, Alabama State University in Montgomery (I was in Montgomery a few years ago when I flew to Atlanta and drove to Montgomery to spend the night after I realized that I had never spent a night in Alabama when I thought I had spent at least one night in all 48 continental states), Auburn University in Auburn, Samford University and University of Alabama Birmingham both in Birmingham, and, Alabama A&M in Huntsville (I was in Huntsville many years earlier to visit the space museum there).
MISSISSIPPI: I had visited Mississippi a few months earlier and visited all but one college campus in the state. This trip I was in Oxford for the University of Mississippi. Many years ago I was in Oxford on a very pleasant sunny Sunday and thus got a good memory about being in the town.
ARKANSAS: Just a very brief drive across the northeastern part of the state to make my first ever visit to Jonesboro (unless my parents drove us through there on our way to Kansas City from Tennessee). The city is the home to Arkansas State University.


MISSED VISITING:
--Fort Donelson National Battlefield -- arrived just before sunrise, expecting to see the park before it opened two hours later but it was locked, even the cemetery
--The ferry ride at Fort Matanzas National Park -- hurricane damage keeps most of the park closed
--West Florida University -- road construction and traffic jams prevented me from getting to the campus
--Was supposed to see two friends in Georgia and two in Florida but ended up seeing only one in each state
--All around and through the Land Between the Lakes which is mostly in Kentucky but a little bit in Tennessee -- not enough time on this trip
--University of Tennessee at Martin -- too far out of the way on this trip, my father got some kind of accounting certification there sometime around the time I was born
--Southeast Louisiana University in Hammond LA -- it was just too many hours and miles west of Mobile to make the drive worth it

OBSERVATIONS: Some observations made while traveling in this area:

The Bests:

  1. Spring colors
  2. Visiting my two friends
  3. Atlanta traffic turned out to be much easier than expected. Now I know why they still have rush hour at 10:00 am -- because few people are on the road at 7:00 am. The campus was very easy to get the photos, except for the one I could not find!
  4. Having the Panama City beach to myself for nearly half an hour, despite the near total cloud coverage blocking my view of the sunrise over the Gulf
  5. Despite a couple of near misses, completed my plans (except for West Florida University) and even got home the day before I planned
  6. Emory College is a beautiful campus in an area with many large, nice, well-kept fancy homes
  7. St. Augustine and Flagler Colelge are beautiful with great architecture. My friend had visited the campus before and knew we needed to go inside a couple of buildings.
  8. I have driven it several times over the years and still enjoy the scenery between Cookeville TN and Knoxville TN
  9. Sylva NC -- maybe I was just lucky, TWICE. But I drove through town and hit a green on almost every traffic light along the main route. The number one criteria I use to determine how much (or little) I like a town is how easy is it to get around town. Most towns design the lights so that you must stop at nearly every one of them.
  10. Some perfect weather in several places: Fort Matanzas, I-85 west of Clemson heading towards Atlanta, Savannah evening in Forsyth Par
  11. Spending two hours with my friend on the beach near St. Augustine and Fort Matanzas. We walked maybe a kilometer or so south then sat on a dune to enjoy the place and just talk.
  12. Lots of places in Florida have traffic light signals that are horizontal instead of vertical. And, they are on poles that are very small in diameter. Thus, they are hard to spot from a distance.


The Worsts:

  1. Nashville: even when I lived in Tennessee I was unimpressed with this city. This trip reinforced that opinion. My top three least favorite U.S. cities, in order, are: New Orleans, Detroit, Nashville. It was interesting to see all the fall colors/blooms there which reminded me "Oh yeah, I used to live with this"
  2. Florida: the state simply has too many vehicles and too many people -- residents and tourists. Highways are crowded and often under construction which causes long delays. Several accidents caused long delays too. And even one morning, while trying to get to Ft. Meyers, I had to take detours of detours and encountered yet another accident. In all, Florida caused me to spend about eight hours longer on the road than I planned.
  3. Hurricanes: I thought I was finally, after three visits to Fort Matanzas, going to take the ferry over to the actual fort. But hurricanes last year caused so much damage there that the ferries still are docked, awaiting contracts to be completed to do the repair work.
  4. Spartanburg SC: traffic patterns and light timing is about as bad as it can get
  5. Sunburn: It never occurred to me that I would be on the beach thus never packed sunscreen, my friend and I spent over two hours on the beach near Fort Matanzas and St. Augustine

The Totals:


Just to list this as of March 2018: