First time out in Augusta - Day 1410 (Year 4, Day 316)

Augusta, GA

Mitch was off work today, as his new regional boss can't meet with him until tomorrow, to get him set up with new equipment and maps.  There were still some non-grocery items we needed to buy. My workload was fairly light, so I suggested before running errands, we go to the Visitor Center to pick up a bunch of brochures (about 15 miles away in the downtown area, a few blocks from the river).  The building also houses the History Museum, so we thought that would be fun for an hour or 2.  Unfortunately, the museum was closed today, but at least we did get a few brochures.

It actually turned out to be rather exciting anyway.  When crossing the street, we noticed tracks running in the middle of the street.  We know they have trolley tours, so we thought these were trolley tracks.  The photo on the brochure, however, showed it to be a bus.  We asked a staff member about it, and she informed us those were live train tracks!  Normally, train tracks run parallel to a street or highway.  We never saw them in the middle of a business street before!.  What made it exciting was a train actually went by!!!  Mitch captured it on video, which you can view at these links (there are 2 videos)

Watch this one first (click)

Watch this one next (click)  (I wanted to take a still photo, but you can hear me screaming in the background "how do I take this (#&% thing off selfie mode?"  Needless to say, I didn't figure it out on time, but the videos are much better anyway).

Driving through the downtown area, there were a few interesting murals on the buildings.  One thing that captured my eye was this toy piano outside of an empty storefront, painted and inviting people to stop and play (you can click on the photo to enlarge it):

Afterwards, we went to Walmart and then Lowes; the main goal being to buy a treatment for the fire ants.  I've also always wanted to start a little vegetable garden and finally figured out how to do it (just use pots and put them in the shower when traveling).  So we picked up some cherry tomato, green pepper and zucchini plants, pots and soil.  When we returned home, I had some work to do, and Mitch has been outside doing the potting.  Here's my "garden" and gardener.  I'm sure the pots will be much larger by the time we leave here.



My overall impression so far is that Augusta looks like "Anywhere USA" with highways and lots and lots of shopping.  But we really haven't ventured out very far yet, so this may very well change.