Boy, do I have something to tell the psychiatrist when CC goes on Wednesday to be judged whether he should be compensated for having PTSD.

You see, CC is now on a mission to visit all the state parks in Georgia. This obsession began this summer shortly after he began traveling through life in a wheelchair.  He bought a Forester to carry the chair around and became adamant that we were going each state park in Georgia. It took us three state park visits to finally find one manned so that he could buy a disabled veteran pass for one half of what a normal citizen would have to pay for it.

Saturday about 10:30am, CC decides it is time to use our pass and find another state park to visit. He got on the internet and found Providence Canyon in Southwest Georgia near the Georgia Alabama line.  It took us two hours from that time to fix a smoothie, pack a lunch and get the car packed.  And then we were off.


The car's navigational device was dead set on us going to downtown Charleston South Carolina on the way from central Georgia to southwest Georgia.  I spent an hour listening to it tell me to make a U Turn right away before I found a way to silence it. The navigational system in this car is for the left of brain, the hearty PC user, not a right brained, intuitive Apple user.

We made the trip in close to three hours. We were on our way to a glorified gully, an ecological disaster caused by poor farming techniques. It advertises itself as not having been there 150 years ago.  So I am kind of mad on the way because I don't like looking at big ecological screw ups. They upset me.  On the good side, I realized I am in Native American territory where the creeks still have Indian sounding names and even some of the towns do.  

Southwest Georgia is lush right now and there are some beautiful wildflowers blooming. 

The Providence Canyon is best suited to hikers and is not for handicapped folks in wheelchairs.  There were trails down to the bottom

and several places to park, get out, walk a short distance and look over into the canyon rim at all the erosion, but if a person is totally confined to a wheelchair, we suggest you find a different park. 

The cliffs are Georgia Red Clay and Georgia White Kaolin with extrusions poking way up from an eroded valley.

We had a picnic under an old cedar tree and then left.

We were close to Florence Marina State Park so we drove there. This place is much more handicap friendly.  The state park is situated on the northen end of a 45,000 acre lake created from the Chattahoochee River in 1967.

Alabama is right across the waterway. We could paddle all the way to the Gulf from this place if we wanted. 

The boats here are big water boats. The headwaters of the Chattahoochee River supply Atlanta with drinking water and has been subject of a bitter dispute about water rights between Georgia, Alabama and Florida for the last twenty years. The supreme court just ruled that Atlanta could not use the challanged drinking water because  it is in a federal reservoir.

We drove around and accessed just how handicapped friendly the Florence Marine was. If you are in a wheel chair, you will find the accomdations you need here .

We left there and headed up 27 to Lumpkin and at the 4 Corners BarBQ had a dynamite supper.

Then we began the trip home. This is the part of the journey which tells me my life is not normal.  I live with a person whose whole nervous system is covered in shrapnel and  is a traveling war zone.

We were in Montezuma, Georgia at 8:30 at night and I am driving. It had just gotten dark. A full moon had risen and it was sweet Georgia countryside.  A pick up truck got behind me in town a short ways back while I tried to navigate on Hwy 49 and see which way the road went. He gave a couple of soft honks at me as I tried decide whether to turn down the railroad tracks or the road.

A mile down the road my phone rang and it was my 85 year old mother. I always answer when she calls. CC began yelling at me at the top of his lungs that the speed limit is 35.  I am going 30. I am riding down the road at a slow speed at night on Hwy 49 and he is convinced the people in pickup truck behind us could have a gun and might shoot at us because I am going five miles below the speed limit.  

Did you know that seventy five percent of the people traveling after dark have guns in their car?  I, myself, have not ever heard this statistic before.  I have to hang up with my mother because my husband is in a full blown PTSD attack in the middle of Montezuma, Georgia, Mennonite capital of the state.

Now, surely we deserve some compensation because CC is hardwired at this point in his life to think people are going to shoot at us.  I can't even take him out after dark anymore.