Old Car City is located in the small town of White, Georgia, and is a very unique place.  At Old Car City, you will find LOTS of old cars, none more recent than 1970's and many as old as the 1930's!  There is also LOTS of rust! At Old Car City, you will find lots of rusty cars (approximately 4000) scattered throughout a wooded lot, a small museum containing the last car purchased by Elvis,  and a collection of toy cars and bicycles.   They advertise that they are the "world's largest classic car junkyard" and a sign at the front of the junkyard promotes being a "photographers paradise"!  Here's the photos from my visit to Old Car City last weekend. 

North Carolina Road Trip

In Mid-October, three of us went on a fall road trip in search of color.  Our plan was to explore the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC.  However, many of the leaves at the top of the Blue Ridge peaks had already turned brown.  Fortunately, we had other options for shooting.  We discovered a beautiful winery in Hendersonville, NC, which had only been open to the public for 4 weeks, but in operation for four years.  The wine tasting at Burnt Shirt Winery was exceptional - all the wines were delicious (if that's a word you use to describe wines)!  The wine sommelier and the vintner were friendly and open to telling us all about the wines and the vineyard and were more than happy to let us photograph the vineyard.  

  The next day we traveled the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked to Crabtree Falls - a 3-mile hike to a beautiful waterfall and one of the areas which did have beautiful fall foliage. 
A visit to Cataloochee Valley in the far northeast corner of the Smoky Mountains National Park was one of the most interesting and colorful days of our trip.  There we found vintage barns, homes, churches and a schoolhouse and elk which have been reintroduced to the valley.  The elk were in rut and the stags had their harems surrounding them!
More posts to follow about this trip!

Gibbs Gardens: Summer

A recent trip to Gibbs Gardens rewarded me with photos of some of the most beautiful water lilies I have seen.  The water lily pond there is designed to look like Monet's garden with a replica of the Monet Garden bridge spanning the pond.  The quantity and variety of water lilies was awesome!  I'm looking forward to the next trip which will hopefully feature lots of colorful fall leaves!

State Fair

There's nothing like a state fair for people watching, lots of lights and action, and great photo ops!  The lights on the rides make beautiful colorful motion shots.  The game booths and merchandise booths are the height of tacky color, but in the night light, they are beautiful!  Here are photos of the North Georgia State Fair which happened recently in Cobb County.

Tennessee Farm Trip

July 4th quilt by Marshall

Double Irish Chain by me

A weekend trip to Tennessee gave me an opportunity to shoot some new quilt photos in a rural setting.  My friends, Janie and Larry, live on a farm which has been in Larry's family since the 1800's.  The fences and the balcony of their restored home were perfect to hang quilts created by another friend, Marshall, and two of my quilts. 

Marshall's pinwheel quilt hanging on the balcony of Hamilton Hall

Graffiti Search

Sometimes the road trip you take is close to home.  That was the case when my fellow photography enthusiast, Clay, and I made the "trip" to the east side of Atlanta in search of graffiti...and we found it!  I think graffiti was the original social media.  I am always fascinated with the messages contained in the graffiti.  I think this message says it well:  "Listen to me!  Hear what I'm saying..."

Rural Georgia

You never know what you are going to find on a road trip, especially one in rural Georgia!  On a recent trip which included Moultrie, Albany and Americus, my friend Clay and I happened to be invited to tour the restored Rylander Theatre in Americus.  Built in 1921, it was beautifully restored (after 40 years of no use) in 1999 and now is used for various theater productions from plays to ballet performances.  The Rylander is also known as the home of "Little Mo" a smaller version of the Moller organ in the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  It was also restored and is used for theatre productions and recitals.  We had joined the tour with a group of antique Buick car enthusiasts who were passing through Americus and had their Buicks on display as well. 

Earlier in the day we had photographed one of the many pecan groves along the way.  This one was offset from the road and allowed uninterrupted photo time with no cars or houses that we had to shoot around.  The morning sun peeked through as we arrived and added drama to the photos.

A little way down the road on Georgia Hwy 41 we found a beautiful old Victorian home, overgrown with hedges and the yard littered with old tires.   The details were still there - the gingerbread trim and the stained glass windows were still beautiful.  One can only imagine who lived there and what the family life was like.

Desoto State Park Wildflowers

At the end of April, I went on a road trip with Doug and Beth Powell to Desoto State Park in Northeast Alabama.  Desoto is located at the end of the mountain range that is Lookout Mountain and is known for the abundance of wildflowers and numerous waterfalls.
However, the 80 degree weather in the South in February and March had forced the wildflowers out of hiding early and we found very few blooms.
All was not lost, however, as the mountain laurel and rhododendron were blooming beautifully and the hiking trails were great exercise.  The waterfalls were still flowing and Desoto Falls was especially impressive.  Mountain laurel were blooming in abundance near the falls and around the lake created by the dam above the falls.
Adjacent to Desoto State Park is Little River Canyon, a national preserve and the deepest canyon east of the Mississippi.  Here the trail next to the river revealed a few wildflowers, but the best was the beautiful Jack in the Pulpit pictured here. 

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah

You can't take a trip to the coast of Georgia without making a stop in Savannah! This time I wanted to visit historic Bonaventure Cemetery - a cemetery that has been in existence since the 1800's and is the final resting place of politicians and celebrities alike.  Bonaventure is draped with Spanish moss and you can imagine how spooky it would be at night.  It was featured in John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and became famous for the Bird Girl statue pictured on the front of the book.  The Bird Girl is no longer there, having been moved to the Telfair Museum to protect it from the many visitors who came to see her.

Probably the most famous person buried in Bonaventure is Johnny Mercer, composer of hundreds of familiar songs, and his burial site will remind visitors of them for years to come.  The bench next to his gravestone lists the most popular of his songs and features his signature.  His epitaph is "And the Angels Sing".  The epitaph on his wife's grave is "You must of been a beautiful baby", the title of another one of his songs.

I was impressed with the intricate detail of the gates and fencing surrounding many of the graves.  Here's just one of the iron gates found there.

And as always, there were lots of angels - sweet, contemplative expressions or fat-cheeked, cherub-like cuties.

St. Simons Island Sunrise

 St. Simons Island is protected by an historic lighthouse which still operates just like St. Augustine. It's not as tall and the staircase is not as scary, but also not quite as picturesque!
After shooting the lighthouse as the sun came up, I went to a beach area a little farther north and shot this silhouette of a weathered tree and the sun behind the clouds.   The following morning, I went to the far end of the island and was treated to a beautiful sunrise with billowing clouds and golden reflections.  Not far from the beach was the Bloody Marsh, the site of a battle between the Spanish and the English in 1742.  The Spanish were trying to reclaim the Georgian colony, but were defeated by the troops of General Oglethorpe never to hold the colony of Georgia again. 
One thing that is not over a hundred years old is the new bridge from Jekyll to St. Simons.  The structure of the bridge looks like the sails of a boat - very appropriate for an island on the coast of Georgia!

Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, GA

One evening I drove over to Jekyll Island and went to the driftwood beach.  There the skeletons of trees form abstract sculptures on the beach.  Jellyfish had washed up on the beach allowing some closeups without the possibility of a sting.   I stayed until the sun set over the port of Brunswick.  It was a beautiful sunset and well worth the trip. 

Christ Church, St. Simons Island

St. Simons Island is draped with as much history as it is Spanish Moss.  Driving through the live oak lined roads, you are as likely to see a former slave cabin like Hazel's Cafe as you are to see a beautiful white clapboard church like Christ Church. Christ Church is the former parish of Charles Wesley.  His brother, John Wesley, also worked to establish a church for the people of St. Simons and Fort Frederica.
The cemetery next to Christ Church is full of stories and is the final resting place of Eugenia Price who used those stories to write novels about St. Simons Island and Georgia.

The tombstones in the cemetery are dark with age, but its obvious by the flags and flower arrangements that someone still cares about the people buried there.  I was intrigued by the tombstone with a tiny statue of a puppy and the inscription "As we looked steadfastly on him, we saw his face, as it had been the face of an angel."