Saturday March 25, 2023
I am meeting my friends in Atlanta on Monday but had to do the BMW tour on Friday since they don’t offer them weekends. That left me with two days to explore the region but I have already visited the major tourist destinations in recent years and so I tried to find some interesting places off the beaten path. Today was a partial success.
The success came in Athens, GA where I visited the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia. These are part of the University of Georgia and are not as formal as many public gardens since they are also used for research. There is a tropical garden in a large greenhouse structure adjacent to the visitor center as well as flower, international, herb, heritage, shade and native gardens outside. There is also a great children’s garden with slides, rope bridges, spider webs etc. connecting different parts and an underground root system they can explore. The formal gardens are quite compact but there are also several miles of walking trails in the area surrounding them. I enjoyed nearly two hours exploring.
My next stop, this 12 ft (3.7 m) high iron horse sculpture, was just a roadside novelty with a story.
It was created, in 1954, by a Chicago artist in residence at the University of Georgia who was on a grant to introduce modern art to the south. However, when it was installed on campus, students rejected and vandalized it by putting straw under it and setting fire to it as well as spreading manure on it and painting it with graffiti. Firefighters were called to quell the rampaging students with hoses and the university hid it in a secret location for five years. Eventually a professor asked to install the sculpture on his farm and, not only has it remained there ever since, but it is now used as an icon for the plant sciences farm of the university.
My final stop was at the Old Gaol in Greensboro, GA.
There are two floors with the cells on the lower floor having no natural light. The Gaol is normally locked but visitors can borrow the key from a local shop to explore inside, which I did.
I then headed further south to Macon, GA which I will explore tomorrow.
Since coming from a faraway world.
Reading about the Old Gaol in Greensboro, GA reminded me about a long ago school assignment to read parts of the letters from Nehru to his daughter! Haven’t come across the word “gaol” in the US. Glad the peculiar iron horse sculpture survived.
Silly visits, I know, but there’s always something to be seen wherever you go. I visited the “Old Gaol” in Melbourne in 2019 but, like you, I had not seen the word used in the US before.