Traveling Companion: None
Vehicle: My 2008 Toyota Rav-4
Woo-hoo! The lowest highest point has been attained!
My trip boasted an odd assortment of ports of call. It started with a meandering Fourth of July drive through southern
Georgia with a brief stop in Cordelle to see the Titan I missile at the Confederate Air Force Pad No. I.
I was able to arrange it so that my visit to my aunt and uncle in Albany would mark my 1000th county visited. They live in a neighborhood that was carved out of a pecan orchard, and so the trees in their back yard and in the field across the street are arranged in a nice rectangular grid. It looks both neat and kind of odd. On Saturday, they took me to the local aquarium centering on the Flint River. I got to see both a fight between two crabs that ended in them both dragging each other over the cliff tumbling two feet feet (quite far for animals not more than an inch long) and also an alligator bite a small chunk out of another alligator's tail.
Then Sunday morning, I collected a couple more counties in southwestern Georgia before crossing into southeastern Alabama. I stopped in
Enterprise to check out the boll weevil monument. It seems that the town wasn't doing all that great when cotton was king, and this was
before the boll weevil showed up and killed the cotton. However, one bright local decided to fill the void in their fields with peanuts,
which proved to be quite lucrative. Out of gratefulness, the boll weevil was placed in the hands of the statue that hand been build a couple of years
earlier. That statue has since been destroyed by people who stole the boll weevil, but a replica was soon decreed.
From Enterprise, I headed south into the Florida panhandle. I wasn't there very long, but I was able to stop at Britton Hill, the nation's lowest state highest point. It should be noted that this is indeed the Lowest Highest Point regardless of what they say in the very entertaining, but factually incorrect, song by Moxy Früvous from their album Live Noise. (It's 345 feet; Ebright Azimuth, Delware, is 448 feet.) However, as they admit earlier on the album, they are Canadians, and if you told me that say, Prince Edward Island is the province with the lowest highest point, I'd probably believe you even though I have no idea if this is true.
Anyway, Britton Hill isn't all that spectacular, but it is pretty easy to get to, in a little park a couple of well signed miles off of
US-331 east of Paxton, FL, just a mile or two from the Alabama border. It was raining, and so I didn't hang out there long or take the
short nature trail.
From there, it was up Nashville for some time with the family. Mom and I went to the Frist Center for a cool exhibit on Tiffany lamps.
Then I flew to San Diego for the SIAM Annual Meeting. There wasn't too much time for sightseeing, but I did get to walk around the harbor for a little while, and it's pretty cool.