October 25, 2023 Day 18 Thomasville Georgia 72.6 miles
Another partially cloudy day. We have a short driving day today. No rain overnight so that is good.
Most of the way to the first stop was roads we covered yesterday. In some ways that helps. Our first stop today is the Four Corners Cotton Gin. They only had one tour guide and he was late. Not a good start. Luckily we were in the first group. This plant is where they bring in the cotton from the field and remove the debris and then bale it in smaller bales to be stored for about one year. Then it is taken to the thread makers. The removed debris is made into cottonseed oil, cotton meal and other things. The cotton meal is fed to cattle. They really like that. The processing plant is extremely noisy due to the many machines. They charge $100 an acre to cut and bale the cotton. To extract the debris cost $0.06 per pound. Some of the fields look whiter because they have most likely been irrigated. The company also processes peanuts in another corner of the property. We didn’t see that process. The brown bales that we saw yesterday are the remains of the peanut plants after they are harvested. It was difficult to hear the guide and he took too long. Some people gave up the wait and left. Too bad because it was interesting.
Our next stop was the coffee break at an antique store. It had some beautiful merchandise. Rob bought Connie’s Christmas present there. It’s a book press lamp. Now we just have to figure out how to get it home. We stopped at Lowe’s for some packing tape to make some custom cardboard boxes. Now we just need to find some magic to make the boxes fit in the car.
Then off to the town of Cairo. We went to the Zebulon Movie Theater which is the oldest in Georgia. They gave us each a bottle of Coke and a bag of fresh popcorn. The movie was titled Genevieve. It’s a British comedy made in 1953 about two guys driving their antique cars from London to Brighton and back. It was pretty good.
Lunch was in their cultural center. They had boneless pork chops and fried chicken. The pork was incredibly good. Rob asked for the recipe but they don’t give it out. One of the tour folks said just slow cook in a smoker.
Not far from there was Wayne Hadden’s museum. He is another person who has collected lots of stuff. Some might call it junk. He had cars, gas pumps, fire engines, tractors, match box vehicles, records, Coke bottles, and too many other things to list. Impossible to absorb it all.
The evening dinner was included. They gave out awards for participation in Glidden Tours and recognized the freshman. Freshman are first time participants. Nearly 1/3 are freshman this year.
Spoffords Travel 