Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

I walked through Hammondville and Fort Payne, Alabama. I covered 16 miles. Weather: 75 and cloudy in the morning to 89 and sunny in the afternoon.

The day started cloudy and a little drier than the past couple of days. I took a detour to avoid some dogs (more about dogs below). The detour went through a small cemetery that contained several dozen Phillips graves. I guess I am related to these Phillips somehow. That was a odd feeling seeing your family name on so many headstones. Some of these Phillips died in the late 1800s. They have been in these parts a long time.

The morning was nice and quiet with little traffic. This all changed about 11AM. I guess the lunch and afternoon traffic? I don’t know, but it wasn’t much fun constantly stepping off the road half the day.

Dogs – I like dogs. I love dogs (not as much as I love my wife, so I had to give up on owning a dog 26 years ago). I don’t like dogs chasing after me on the highway. There seems to be more dogs unchained, unfenced, unfettered, and un-everything you can think of here. Dogs chase after you harder if you are riding a bicycle than if you are walking. Maybe someone who knows about dogs can explain that one to me.

I had morning coffee and a piece of cake at Shorty’s Cafe in Hammondville. This town is little more than a wide place in the road. It has two yellow blinking traffic lights, a couple eating places (like Shorty’s pictured here), a Town Hall building, and a Volunteer Fire Department. I put a photo of the Volunteer Fire Department on the Wikipedia page for Hammondville.

Immediately upon leaving the Hammondville town limits I entered the Fort Payne city limits. I am not sure why towns extend their limits out so far, but there must be a (money) reason. Things changed as soon as I crossed that line. The little old houses and rusted house trailers were replaced by a number of 3-car garage 2-story all brick homes of various architectures. The sagging barbed wire was replaced by white, freshly painted, wooden fences. Tilting barns with rusted roofs disappeared. In there place were vast lawns with large mowers going full speed to catch up with the recent rains. I don’t think the owners of these palatial estates were cutting the grass. If you can afford the estate, you can afford to pay someone else to cut the grass.

Fort Payne is a nice small city. U.S. Route 11 passes through the old downtown area – a good main street town. About 2/3s of the store fronts downtown have active businesses. There is a great Guitar Store there in the guise of a pawn shop. The majority of their guitars are new, not pawned. There are several restaurant and antique stores combined into one business. I had coffee and a chili dog at one. A great combination.

Fort Payne has two Interstate-59 exits, so it is plagued on both ends with the curse of the Golden Mile. Too bad.

I saw this cactus while walking through the northern Golden Mile. I am not a botanist, but cactus in Alabama? Someone explain please.

Fort Payne is the birthplace of Alabama the music group. In the downtown area is a small plaza with four life-size statues of the members of the group. This town is proud of their “hometown” boys who made good (an understatement – see their Wikipedia page for some of their accomplishments). I wanted to stand next to a

The Alabama Statues in Fort Payne

statue and take a photo, but let that one go as it may have insulted someone. Here is a photo of the statues.

One last photo from Fort Payne. This is at an auto parts store on Route 11. Don’t ask me how they did this, but it is one of those things that you won’t see unless you travel through small towns in America.

A Car

by Dwayne Phillips

Today I walked through Rising Fawn, Georgia – great name for a little town. Once again, no rain. The temperature started at 75 and ended at 85 with clouds in the morning and afternoon and sun most of the day. Again, the humidity was about 300%. I covered 15 miles today.

I exited Georgia and entered Alabama. I should be in Alabama for 2 1/2 to 3 weeks. I am still in a valley. I guess this is still the Lookout Valley, and it still reminds me a lot of the Shenandoah.

Rising Fawn, Georgia is a small town with three churches, a few restaurants, and such. I put a photo of its Post Office on its Wikipedia page. The town has a feed store with a bench in front of it. When I walked by, there were four old men in overalls sitting on the bench. Above the bench was a sign labeled “Information Center.” You can’t make up things like this.

Entering Alabama. I didn

An Ant Hill in Alabama

Here is a picture of an ant hill next to my shoe. While walking on the side of the road, I frequently have to step off the road into the grass while cars pass. A new obstacle the past two days are the ant hills. They are everywhere. I have been fortunate so far in that I have not stepped in any and had a million ants on me. I don’t know what kind or color of ants these are, and that ignorance is okay with me.

I crossed half a dozen creeks today. This photo shows one of them. Given all the rain in this area, all the creeks are flowing briskly. If you look closely at the tree in the photo, you can see a high-water mark on it that is about three feet higher than the water in the photo. They had a lot of rain here.

A shed with advertisements

One final photo from the road today. This is a shed – not a barn. You can gain an appreciation of the scale by noting the two doors. These are regular doors. This little shed has more advertisements per square foot than any I have seen. The Rock City ad is on the south side of the roof so that people heading towards Chattanooga will see it.

by Dwayne Phillips

That sounds like a good sci fi title, but this is reality.

Georgia, all of it, is in the eastern time zone. I am in the far, far northwest corner of Georgia (Trenton, GA). The sun comes up here at 7:15AM. In all time zones at this time of year the sun rises at about 6:15 AM (check it out on Weather.com or elsewhere). Hence, this place should be in the central time zone so the sun would rise at the right time.

The same goes for Chattanooga, TN. The sun rises at 7:15.

Ten miles southwest of here I will enter Alabama. All of Alabama is in the central time zone. The sun will rise at 6:15 like it “should.”

Such is life at the edge of a time zone. I wonder about the long-term effects of living in such a place.

by Dwayne Phillips

Today I walked out of the southern end of Chattanooga, TN and through Wildwood, Morganville, New England, and Trenton, GA – 14 miles. The big news of the day is that I did not get wet by rain (lots of perspiration though). These area has been deluged the past week, but none on me today. I started at 75 degrees, cloudy and about 300% humidity. At the end of the day it was sunny with a few clouds and 85.

Here I am at the start of the day in a Wal Mart parking lot.

In just three miles, I entered Georgia.

I have to admit some confusion with Morganville and New England. They are dots on the maps, but no signs on the roadside and no signs of towns or anything. Wildwood, however, is not a dot on the map. It does, however, have a sign and a post office. I put a photo of its post office on its Wikipedia page.

This walk goes through the Lookout Valley. At least I think this is called the Lookout Valley. I saw that on an old map on a historical marker. It reminds me much of the Shenandoah Valley. Route 11 runs down the middle. The Interstate (I-24 and then I-59) is parallel to Route 11 and to the west of it.

Trenton, GA is the county seat of Dade County. Right in the middle of town in the middle of Route 11 is the county courthouse. I think it is the county courthouse. The corner stone says it is, but the building standing there looks more like a Federal building. It looks out of place. I put a couple of photos of Trenton on the Wikipedia page for it.

Tomorrow I should enter Alabama. I’ll be in that state for many days.

Oh, Trenton has a great little used book store “Books! New and Used” on Highway 136 (a block or so west of Route 11).

I love little used bookstores.

An endorsement for River City Bicycles in Chattanooga, TN. They saved my day this morning. My bicycle had two flats. They fixed me up very quickly and had me on my way.

Many thanks.

by Dwayne Phillips

I post this from Chattanooga, TN. I have driven here today. This is where we halted last year on November 4th (the day our grandson was born).

Weather willing, I start walking again tomorrow.

by Dwayne Phillips

I just received approval for a Leave of Absence from my job. I will be walking again. The plan is to start on Tuesday September 22nd.

This is great news.

I may be out on the road walking again soon.

My boss has arranged for me to be off work six to eight weeks without pay (that doesn’t sound like good news during a recession, does it?). I don’t know when this will start – maybe in September, maybe in October. I’ll miss my grandson among others, but I look forward to walking again.

by Dwayne Phillips

Rivers and hills go together. I guess I knew this at some point in my life, but walking impresses the lesson.

It really is pretty simple and is based on the simple fact of physics and fluid dynamics that,

water flows downhill

Rivers are at the bottom of a set of hills. The water in the river naturally settles at the bottom of a hill. When I walk across a bridge over a river, I have just finished walking down a hill. And I am about to start walking up a hill. The down-the-hill-to-the-river walk never seems as big as the up-the-hill-away-from-the-river walk.

The first time I noticed this relationship between rivers and hills was near Fancy Hill, Virginia. I had crossed a simple steam and then walked up a long hill. I really noticed this relationship near Pulaski, Virginia. That was the single biggest, steepest hill on the walk so far.

The next time you are speeding along the Interstate and you cross a bridge, look down at the river. Then look at the hills on both sides of the river. The hills will be there.

by Dwayne Phillips

If you are using the RSS feed to this blog or something that points you to it when something changes, you have noticed something:

Lots of changes to the blog entries.

I belong to a small writers group. This week I was challenged to do something related to writing that I had been delaying. My task is to rearrange or reorganize or something to the entries to this blog. I went through and changed all the tags to all the entries.

The categories of the entries are geographical: state and counties.

The tags of the entries are more topical: Food, Signs, Americana, Health, and such.

Perhaps when I have a chance to finish this walk and do a few others things, a book will come from it. That is one of my wishes.