The Roundabout Way

Saturday, 6th April 2013


Map: Norcross, Georgia to Simpsonville, South Carolina---172 miles

Driving from Norcross to Gainsville is a study in the problems of driving the Interstates.  They can even be beautiful once one gets out into the exurbs, such as Buford---but then the smooth, climbing roll becomes bland, the endless forest with sky scraping billboards as quotations boring.  The need for speed become paramount, and motorists comply.  Of course we also covered our first 36 miles in as many minutes, avoiding the frantic stop and go of suburban Atlanta and having a true context to thoroughly enjoy the next 25 miles to Cornelia.

Old Cornelia Highway is a 1930s joy to drive---fast enough to feel like you're getting places, but rolling and banking enough for motoring pleasure.  Once above Lula the highway climbs out of the ravines and rides the ridges, offering farther vistas that occasionally reach the Smoky Mountains.  Along the way are plenty of old houses to add interest, and most of all, endless roadside service buildings---most built unusually substantial.  Many of the smallest buildings were still built of brick, quaint as cottages, though now mostly unused.  The trashy aspects of the South are largely absent.

This is still an important railroad corridor, and Lula has an annual Railroad Days every May.  There's a real sense of transportation history around there, with the rumbling train adjacent and the remains of our past highway culture.  Going a bit astray in Cornelia, we stopped at the old train station to study Patsy's GPS.  Downtown was tidy but rather empty.

From here the old highway is Georgia 13/Dicks Hill Parkway, arcing around its namesake and dropping into Toccoa---a city decimated by the fact that furniture manufacturing has moved to China.  Even the Dairy Queen was boarded up, much to our dismay.  Somehow both the Lincoln and Cadillac dealers remained open, slumming like debutantes.  East of town we passed one shuttered factory after another, although some small family businesses remained---such as So-and-So and Son Spindles and Table Legs.

Butia capita, courtesy of Google Images.

East of Toccoa we were traveling on a combine of two Georgia highways and old US 123---which became merely US 123 after crossing the South Carolina border.  The first thing I noticed there was the appearance of exotic plants---mostly the very hardy Mediterranean fan palm, but also a Butia capitata, the Pindo Palm.  While the Argentinian native is still hardier than most palms, it's considerably less hardy than the Mediterranean, being damaged by temperatures in the mid-teens and likely killed at around 10 degrees.  Perhaps the area around Westminster is what gardeners and climatologists call a 'banana belt'.  The palm is also known as the Jelly Palm for a popular South American product made from its fruit, which is intensely flavored like banana, pineapple and apricot---one flavor predominating, depending on the soil conditions.  The Butia is rare in California, mainly because it grows very slowly under any conditions.

Fruit cluster on B. capita (Google)

The scenery degenerates to strip malls at Seneca, where we stopped and substituted our ice cream craving with a Hardee's "real" chocolate shake---Dairy Queens being a rarity in South Carolina.

We drove on through prettier-from-the-highway Clemson, home of the University and the South Carolina Botanical Gardens, and then tried to make our way to my in-laws in Simpsonville over lesser highways.  We were jinxed on many levels, the first being that this atlas page was impossibly small in scale and so lacking details, such as county road numbers.  Patsy's GPS also shrugs at the Carolinas, and it doesn't help she was built before their street was.

"You're supposed to get you're GPS updated!" barked my brother-in-law over my husband's cell phone.  We had the same 'discussion' when we visited several years ago.

Since they never wander about the back roads, they had no clue where we were.  I had done well by traveling South Carolina 88 then 8 then 418 to Fountain Springs, but then my personal GPS/memory failed me and I turned to the right instead of the left and we wandered far off and around towards Woodruff.  The lack of horizon under the dull blue metallic skies really throws off my usually infallible sense of direction, but I knew I was circling in appropriately.  At least the scenery was pleasant and traffic almost non-existent.  A gaggle of Ford Model As passed us in the opposite direction.

I finally landed in the eastern outskirts of Simpsonville, me a basket of crabbiness from the loud debate going over the cell phone---and then the four of us finally figured out we were quite close to their house.  I was most annoyed with myself for not studying Google maps before we left that morning.

Patsy offered a consolation prize of 56.7 MPG---she was really making up for her previous days of lackluster performance.  The curse of systems rebooting was off her.