2008-06-14 30 -84

The drive to the geohash began easily enough; it was just a straight shot up Thomasville Rd into Georgia. The Google map said to then turn left at Rose City Estate. The only problem: there IS no Rose City Estate where my GPS told me to turn. So after a couple U-turns, I pulled into a promising dirt road which led to very private property.

Soon enough I came to a fork. The map had said to stay left on Rose City Estate, but there were still no road signs at all. I know by this point I should have disregarded Google, but I turned left. Oops! The road dead-ended at somebody's house - and it looked like they were home. I made a hasty retreat and backtracked to the fork, and took the right instead. This time, the dirt track kept agreeing with my eTrex, and I stopped the car beside the lake I recognized from the map.

I was finally less than 200 feet from the site, just after 4:00 PM - but I could not reach it. Not that I didn't try; no, I stomped around for half an hour following my GPS, having it get within 70 ft then point behind me. Once I get the pictures up, you'll see that it took me almost until 5 o'clock to get more or less right on the spot.

I may have been annoyed with my GPS, but the place itself was quite nice. There was an abandoned cottage beside the lake, with a covered boat shed right on the water off to the left. A wooden pier extended about 20 feet into the lake in front of the cottage, where I often paused my hunt for the exact site to take in the sights. I saw a red-headed woodpecker (or maybe a pileated, I don't know) fly off during one of my searches. There were many wild blackberry bushes, and I couldn't resist popping a ripe berry into my mouth.

The weather held up well. It was sprinkling when I first arrived, but it soon cleared up and was dry for the rest of my visit.