Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

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Copyright © 1994 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Jan. 31, 1994

Keep Reaching for the Stars

Watching Discovery's Launch and Touring Southern Georgia

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: USA, Florida, Georgia, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

My brother was touring South America and since I haven't seen him for a while, I thought it would be nice if I could meet him there. It also happened that the carnival period in Brazil overlapped with my brother's stay in Brazil. Hey, I can kill two birds with one stone I said to myself. I can see my brother and enjoy the carnival in Salvador de Bahia which by-the-way is much better than the one in Rio. Anyway, I get all the info about the carnival and contact all my Brazilian friends to discuss the planned trip until one day it hit me. I was at a semiconductor manufacturing plant putting on those funny shoe covers when the thought occurred to me that I might not be able to leave the U.S. right now due to visa formalities. I call the lawyer the next day, and sure enough she confirmed my fear. I can't leave the country. Bummer, there goes a dream. So, I needed to find a place holder for the Brazil trip, somewhere where it's warm around this time of the year and within the U.S. That requirement pretty much narrowed it down to Florida and Hawaii. Given the fact that NASA planned a launch of the space shuttle at the beginning of February, the decision fell in favor of Florida, the Sunshine State.

It must be a popular destination. Most flights were booked out. A red-eye flight brought me into Tampa Sunday morning. This wasn't just any Sunday, no, this was Superbowl Sunday. In my 5 years in the US I haven't seen a single Superbowl. I don't care too much about football but the commercials are supposed to be good. I checked with a friend in Jacksonville to see if he is planning of watching it. He said "Yes" and I rushed over to Jacksonville. The game was actually quite good since both teams were balanced and the two Pepsi commercials were impressive as well as the Lays chips commercial during halftime. My favorite was the "Weird scientist (the guy from Seinfeld) with Cindy Crawford". For a few hours I played couch potato, eating chips and salsa, drinking beer and staring into the tube.

The next day I headed north along the coast checking out the islands or peninsulas just off the coast. The beaches were pretty typical for the FL Atlantic coast. Once in Georgia, the main attraction was Okefenokee Nat'l Monument. Okefenokee, native Indian for "The land of the shaking ground", is a huge swamp area with unique fauna and flora. Even the casual visitor is experiencing first-hand encounters with alligators, beavers, and a variety of birds whose name I don't know. Vegetation is similar but not the same as in the Everglades. Okefenokee is all sweet water, while the Everglades are a mix. The little hikes that I did were quite exhilarating. Mhhh, fresh air, sunshine in your face, nobody around you, soft soil to walk on, ... it feels like heaven -- at least to me. Anyway, it quickly made me forget any worries and relaxed me and put a smile on my face. I spent half a day there since I liked it so much. Besides Atlanta the highlight of my vacation.

Outside of the nat'l monument, I experienced the weirdest hicktowns. For a while I thought I am somewhere in poor Baja California or some village in mainland Mexico. Unpaved dirt roads all over the place. The whole area was very run-down; garbage, left over tires and car wrecks in what might be called a yard. Junk, like torn up pants, hanging from a tree, all colors were sort of brownish; very few houses, some of them collapsing. Most of the people lived in trailers or those prefabricated movable houses. People also dressed to fit into this picture perfectly. You can tell, I was amazed. I certainly would not have expected something like that. But I bet everyone has enough money to have at least one hand-gun and rifle. The NRA must have many supporters from places like that.

To form a contrast I moved on from mother nature to the neighborhood of the rich and famous in GA, Jekyll Island and the brother island in the north. Big houses, big yards, big cars, and big golf courses. Very nice place to cruise around. Also a historic place since a lot of battles have been fought here as the ruins of the forts indicate. The word history seems to be equivalent with the word war here. Any kind of monument was for a war hero or those killed in action. After a while that gets depressing. Are war victories the only thing to be proud of? The light house was sort of the center of the activities, with pubs and by now closed curio shops around it. Sometime at night I decided it's time to move on.

More history is calling in Savannah and Charleston. I actually wanted to make to Charleston, but tiredness overcame me on the freeway and I had to pull over somewhere south of Savannah. With fresh energy the next morning I toured Fort Sumptner, the best preserved fort in this part of the country, and the nearby light house which has many legends associated with it. Stories about the gal living there spread throughout all the harbors of this planet in the good ol' days. The decision to explore Savannah on foot might not have been the right one. Boy oh boy, was it cold. I was freezing, the temperatures must have been below the freezing point. The icy wind took some of the fun out of the exploration. The water/river front with the cobblestone streets was very charming and fascinating. A neat town, but again all the columns and statues are for war heroes.

On the third day comes the third state: South Carolina. Charleston is similar to Savannah. Lots of history, many nice houses (rebuilt after hurricane Hugo), expensive beach properties, really nice neighborhoods, and a lot of influence from the military because the Navy has a gigantic shipyard there. I took a bay cruise for a few hours touring forts, marine museums (submarines, aircraft carriers, ...), the Navy shipyard, etc. Then I zigzagged a few more times through the city to get a better feel of what Charleston is like before I decided to go back to the Peach State.

Shortly before midnight I rolled into Atlanta. I am not going to through all the details, but when I step outside the car to chat with some people I was dumb enough -- yes that's me -- to lock the car key inside the car. This is not even the first time. That happened to me in Mexico too on day. Some people will start laughing now. Go ahead laugh, I thought it was funny too. Anyway, I asked the people that I chatted with for a coat hanger and after 15 minutes I had the car open. My finger were cold but I am getting good at that. This time it was actually a challenge since the opening mechanism was a back/forth switch next to the door handle rather than a up/down knob on top of the door. To top it off, some security guy (I have no clue who he really was) informed me that he was video-taping me after asking me if this my car. That was a pretty good start of seeing Atlanta. Anyway, after midnight I checked into the Int'l Student Hostel where I had late dinner and talked away with some guys from England and New Zealand until I couldn't possibly keep my eyes open anymore. Over night I got paged. So, when I called in the morning I got shocked by the news. Pamela's father died in a car accident. Very tragic. It was also a little bit depressing. Sight seeing in Atlanta didn't seem to be too much fun anymore. It sort of got me thinking too, and I came to the conclusion that I should be happy that I am still alive. I guess there were plenty of occasions in my life where I could have lost the most valuable possession of all: life itself. There were actually so many of these occasions that it is scary. But then again, life without risks is too boring and is lacking too many satisfactions to be worth living. Risks are good, as long as there are some pleasures to gain.

Atlanta is a nice city, I like it. I did many of the touristy things there: did the CNN Headquarters tour which is a little bit like the NBC tours in LA, visited "The World of Coca-Cola" museum which showed tons of memorabilias and offered sodas from all over the world. Besides that Underground Atlanta was worth its time as well as the capitol. To sprinkle in some nature I also went to the Stone Mountain, the world's largest single block of rock with the world's largest relief. Ayer's Rock (sp?) in Australia is supposedly small in comparison. The relief displays three riders, soldiers of course, and is big enough to have room for a luncheon for 20 people on the shoulder of one rider.

Now it was time to rush down to FL again. I stayed another night at a friend's place who was kind enough to put me up. After three hours of sleep I headed to the Kennedy Space Center. At 7:10am a space shuttle launch was scheduled. I just got there in time, 5 minutes before take off. I felt lucky that the launch wasn't delayed to another day as it happens in 40% of all cases. The excitement peaked when we counted down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ignition, lift off. A massive white cloud spread (remember, all visitors are located three miles from the launch pad), than a fire ball followed by the white "smoke" lifted itself. The fire ball is so bright that binocular are not recommended since one primarily gets blinded. On top of the fireball sits the shuttle which is only a black dot without any recognizable features. After maybe 20 to 30 seconds suddenly the noise waves hit us. It is very loud and the wind is now blowing harder at us for a few seconds. The noise level stays up for maybe 20 seconds. By then the space shuttle is going already 10,000 miles per hour. I wish my rental car would go that fast. After some more seconds it is cruising at 18,000 miles per hour and only a bright dot is visible in the sky. One can see/guess where the solid fuel tanks were dropped. But I couldn't make out any parachutes. After 2 to 3 minutes the spectacle is over. Inside the buildings they have live feeds from Houston and so on. Half an hour later all the tourist crowds have disappeared and the only thing left is the now reshaped white cloud that is pointing into the sky. To my surprise, hundreds if not thousands of tourists still come to see the launches. Okay, now I can check space shuttle launches of my list and mark it as "done it, seen it, been there". Two years ago I visited the Kennedy Space Center which was fascinating, but an actual launch is the dot on top of the "i". That made the trip to FL all worth while.

Since I like the Gulf coast better than the Atlantic coast I crossed the state and spent lunch time in Tampa, in Ygbor City to be precise, where I took a delightful tour of old downtown with its Cuban influence. Next I did a comparison study of all the beaches from the islands next to Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa all the way over to Clearwater. I expected more from Clearwater. The beaches a little bit further south like Seminole Beach are nicer, but of course not as beautiful as the one's on Sanibel Island, and Captiva and in Naples. I missed dinner with my friend in Jacksonville due to the traffic jam in St. Petersburg and later in Orlando. Just like in LA. We had some late dinner, Austrian pancakes, and then Ramesh, my friend, showed me two local "watering holes" where we socialized to live Piano music and in a sports club.

The next day was already more or less my last day. Since the FL panhandle was the only place in FL that I hadn't seen, I decided to spend the day there. Tallahassee was just one of the places I checked out. Speeding through some hardly populated coast areas I made it to a village whose name I can't remember. It was something like Cedar Key, out on an island. A small fishing village, with no obvious tourism, not too many houses and maybe a mile off the mainland and 30 miles from the nearest freeway. I parked my car on the beach facing the setting sun. A Harley rider was hanging out there too. Strolling around on the beach bridged the last minutes before the actual sun set. Pelicans were playing in the water in front of the big orange disk which slowly lowered itself. They were gliding just inches above the calm sea which was absolutely waveless. The orange ball seemed to be the center of the universe at this moment, painting the whole horizon in a set of slightly different orange tones. A perfect ending of a nearly perfect vacation. It couldn't have possibly planned any better conclusion of my trip. Later, I sat down in my car still facing the spot where the sun disappeared, leaned the seat a little bit backward so that I could rest and still enjoy the left overs of the sun set. Slowly, the colors changed from orange to more reddish tones and even later to purple before the night took over and covered everything in black. The wind picked up a little and small waves made a soft rhythmic background music saying "Good Bye".

From there I drove most of the night until I got to the airport at 6 in the morning to catch my flight back home. The rest of the day I just "rested" on sofa where I didn't anything else but nap and occasionally got up to cook, eat, and answer telephone calls.

But on Monday I was fully energetic again, ready to rock the world.