On Sunday I headed to Augusta hoping that some part of the Savanah River Trail would reopen but there were hundreds of trees down and they were doing a major cleanup. The TV news said it may not open until after the New Year. So I stayed overnight at a Lowes and left the next morning for a short 1 hour drive to Magnolia Springs State Park,. The last time Peggy and I were here was in 2018 when we were on our way to Jekyll Island.
This was the site of the
largest Confederate prison during the civil war. Camp Lawton, near Millen,
Georgia, housed 10,000 Union prisoners at the end of the Civil War. When
General Sherman’s forces approached in his “March to the Sea”, prisoners and
guards quickly fled leaving the remains of the camp—and even its exact
location—lost to history. But a Yankee prisoner had descriptions and
sketches allowing them to locate the approximate site location. PBS did a story
about a group of archeologists who spent 3 day here 16 years ago with a team
and helped locate artifacts and its exact location.
This is a nice clean park that is probably popular in the
summertime, but it was pretty empty at this time of year,
I will leave tomorrow for another short 1 hour drive to Laura
Walker State Park near Waycross, GA near the northern edge of the Okefenokee
Swamp
A big cold front is coming in tonight and even though I’m
heading south near the FL border, it is expected to be breezy and high around
60o. Peggy and I were last here in 2017 and did a little hiking
& biking/ I played a round of golf on the course that is part of the park.
My new travel plan is to drive 4 hours on Saturday to near Tampa,
camp at a Lowes in Valrico, FL and then on Sunday morning see if I can get a
nice campsite at Lithia Springs County Park. They don’t take reservations so I
always try to get here by 8 am on a Sunday morning in order to get a good
campsite after the weekenders leave.