On Highway 41 again, north of Macon, nearing Atlanta

Outside Macon, by the Morgan View Farm.



Smarr, Georgia. There are several small churches at this intersection outside Macon: the New Providence Baptist Church, the Midway Baptist Church, True Vision, and Lighthouse of Prayer. I don't know why they're all clustered right here.



Forsyth, Georgia, has a nice downtown and a very good-looking Probate Court building.


You may not believe it, but we're getting close enough to Atlanta to say we're near Atlanta. And that will be very fun.

Yellow snow in China

Despite the fact that China has both a Yellow River and a Yellow Sea, the yellow snow that just fell there is not due to either.  It's due to desert dust.

Rare 'yellow snow' blankets north-west China due to freezing temperatures and sandstorms

The travesty of Republicans in Wisconsin

If I had a lot more time, I'd write a lot more about the sickening spectacle that has played out in Wisconsin this past week or so.  I'm referring to the Republican-held legislature (which it wouldn't be if not for the gerrymandered districts*) passing lame-duck session laws that limited the powers of the incoming elected Democratic officials.  This is something that the despicable Republicans in North Carolina already did (and now they're trying to stop a legitimate inquiry into voter fraud that might have illegally gotten one of their boys into office).  Michigan's repugnant Republicans might try to pull a similar stunt.

* Yes, I'm aware Maryland has outrageously gerrymandered districts that favor Democrats. We shouldn't.

But anyway, I don't have a great deal of time, so I'll just provide a link to an article and a quote from that article:

Where the GOP can’t win elections, it changes the rules

"Scott Fitzgerald (R), Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader, admitted Monday that Republicans would not be trying to limit the governor’s powers if outgoing GOP Gov. Scott Walker had won a third term, explaining that Republicans do not trust the incoming Democrat. It does not matter if they trust the next governor. Wisconsin voters chose to do so."

I've been to Wisconsin a couple of times, and it has a lot of dairy cows, which is one reason cheese is a famous product from the state.  The dairy cows produce a lot of manure, and its distinctive aroma can usually be detected for large areas around the fields.

The GOP in Wisconsin stink worse than that, and what they just did is the same thing that drops from the rear orifices of the cows,.

Lighthouse of the Week, December 2-8, 2018: Grand Island East Channel Light, Michigan

This week's lighthouse is on the shores of Lake Superior, on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  It's a restored lighthouse that hasn't been a working light for a long time, but it's a landmark.  The lighthouse is on Grand Island, and since it's on the east channel, it's called the Grand Island East Channel Light, naturally.

Just to the east of the lighthouse, and the nearest community, which is Munising, Michigan, is the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  And in the winter, which is still usually quite cold up here, there are remarkable picturesque ice caves on Grand Island, too.

But about the lighthouse - here is the Lighthouse Friends page.

You can look at the map to see where it is.  The funny thing about its location is that the northern end of Highway 41 swings right by it -- so we'll be back, eventually.

Historically and briefly, there was a lighthouse of some kind here in 1856, but it took until 1867 to get a lighthouse built there. It was hit by lightning in 1891, and after a shipwreck in 1903, they took the lighthouse out of service in 1905.  Some range lights were put up, and the lighthouse was last lighted in late October 1908.  Somehow the building managed to survive the entire remainder of the 20th century, and finally at the turn of the century the shore was protected and the lighthouse was restored in the next years.

So it looks kind of aged.  But it's supposed to look like that. There's a restored lantern room, but I don't think it has an actual light in it.  I'd sure like to visit it

So here are the pictures:

If you want to buy a castle

There's a castle for sale in England.  It's pretty nice.

Historic castle built to replace one gifted to Catherine of Aragon by Henry VIII and dubbed the 'most gorgeous in Christendom' goes on sale for £2.5m

"Devizes Castle in Wiltshire was once owned by the Crown for around 500 years after it was claimed by King Stephen of Blois in the 1130s.

The Grade I-listed building has lots of period features, such as castellations, turrets, stone mullioned windows, impressive fireplaces and oak floors.

It was passed down through the Royal family over the years and was frequently visited by monarchs including King John, Henry III and Edward I, while Henry VIII gifted it to his first wife Catherine of Aragon, although it was later reclaimed after their divorce."

The article at the link has a lot of great pictures, so I found a different one.  This is not the original castle, this is a house built like a castle that was built on the grounds of the historical one.

This is an aerial shot of the quaint little cottage.

I wish I could

I'll never be a surfer -- not even on a little wave -- but I sure wish I could do something like this.

Getting back on Highway 41 around Macon

In the last Highway 41 end-to-end StreetView trek post, we visited the Allman Brothers "big house", where the Allman Brothers Band museum is now located.  Now we move on.

Where Highway 41 meets Vineville Avenue, though the Allman Brothers Band Museum is east (a right turn), Highway 41 goes west (left turn) on Vineville Avenue. There are other places of interest in Macon, like Mercer University and the Tubman Museum, but we're going to stay on the highway.


A view of Wesleyan College.




Now north of Macon, in a community named Bolingbroke, there is a place called the Sweet Tea Cafe just off 41. There are several StreetView panoramas here, so it must be a place of interest. Looks quaint. There are panoramas inside too, if you want to see more. Doing a quick search indicates that this place was formerly called Miss Hattie's. Use that information wisely.



We'll move on quickly in our next post.