Took a trip with my bro Moonshine Eric down to Cordele GA, to visit the family farm and do some esssplorin’. Cordele’s down Highway 75 sorta between Macon and the bustling Hessian burg of Albany. It’s closer to Albany than Macon, and officially qualifies as ‘South Gawja’. If you’re ever passing through do yourself a favor and avoid Albany mall. That is, unless you’re down with either Foghat, Nascar, Sir-Mix-Alot or just have an affinity for burnin’ and/or shootin’ shit. And if you still find rat tails the height of fashion, by all means, go! Them’s yer peeps! Otherwise, hell, just avoid Albany altogether.

Here’s the front of Shit-Talkin’ Eric’s family’s crib, as seen from across the ‘street’ (that’s the dusty looking trail thing in the foreground of the pic, for alla you city folk). Unfortunately your view is partially blocked due to the makeshift casino erected in the front yard.

Here’s the side of the hizzy. Got’s it’s own streetlight! Now that’s swass!

No, it’s not really a casino. This is a side shot of E-Rawks portable Luv Nest, “The Heezy Fasheezy”. He made this himself, and it’s quite a marvel. Just wait till we retrofit it with wall-to-wall avocado green shag, kick on the black light and fire up the hot tub; this thing’s gonna glow like a two story lavalamp.
Honestly, it’s quite a treat to hang inside of it, and it really lends insight to the astounding ingenuity of the Native Americans. There’s nothing quite like laying back and looking at the stars through the smoke flaps while the fire crackles pleasantly in the center. Houses are overrated.(Incidentally, we broke a number of records for the time it took us to erect this. Nothing like a ‘puter geek for a handicap!)

This is a bluralicious shot of the land to the right of the hizzy. This land and the pole barn thingy are on E-Dawgz proppity as well. Terrain looks pretty flat, don’t it? Well, it’s flatter than that.

This is Cooter’s Gas Station, the closest fuelin’ up spot. Cooter makes a mean Armadilly Jerky too!
Actually, this is a cool old pump set up in the backyard of the hizzy. I think the blurry shot lends it a nice rustic appeal, don’t you? Thanks, me too.

“Zoinks! I think we aughta turn around… how ’bout you, Scoob?”

Here’s some old farm equipment hidden in one of the islands of trees amongst all the tilled farmland. There seems to be a lot of this stuff out there and, while some of it’s just straight up junk, other stuff is pretty intriging. Neither I, E-Orr or Campy Bob could figure out what this thing had originally been used for. It’s neat lookin’ though, and guaranteed some tightassed buckhead yuppie would drop big cheese to scoop this up for display on his postage stamp sized front yard.

It’s the fuzzy spec! As we drove around scoping out the land we spotted what looked like a juvenile fox digging at something in a field. Lickety split MC E-Neck was out of the truck and after this bugger at a dead sprint. Nothing like a dirty, wild eyed braid sportin’ white boy bearing down on you to set in the unease.
He managed to catch up with the critter and they had an International Foods Cafe Latte moment, both apparently engaged in a panting staredown, before parting ways. I still say he shoulda caught the little bugger and named him Pasquale. Chicks dig cute, biting, potentially rabid wild animals.
Anyway, this is the only pic I got of the whole debacle. Using my immense graphical manipulatory flexistentialism I blew up the image of the pup in the upper right hand corner. Pay special attention to the amazing level of detail.Trust me, it’s a damn fox, ok?

Here’s one of many ribbety rabbits we encountered during our travels. This rabbit was happy to see us. I think the animals in Cordele are happy to see anyone not looking at them with that telltale “them’s good eatin'” twinkle in the eye.Once again, note the skill with which I applied the soft filter in order to smooth the edges of the subject and its surroundings.

I think I shake too much. Could be the caffiene, but you’d think all the drugs would counteract that.

Eric the FunkyBraided led me to a bridge over a section of cypress swamp. This bridge has been shut down supposedly because of the discovery of some super-endangered snail living around it. Despite the uproar over some damn ole crunchy slugs shutting down an obviously major thoroughfare it looked to me like the snails are doing the locals a favor; this bridge has seen better days.
Here’s a shot off the bridge of the swamp. Cool, ain’t it!

Here’s another shot off the bridge. Erick the Lionbottomed and I were sold on a swamp paddling trip by this time, so we had to rustle up Campy Bob to procure some boatage to continue the mission.

And procure a boat we did! We hopped out on the swamp and headed into Deliverance-land with nary a care in the world; determined to get our swamp on.

This stump is large. Real large. Like, hobbits-can-live-in-it large. And, of course, it looks like one of us genius bipeds came along some time long ago and chopped the tree down. It had to have been hundreds of years old.

More stumpage. These pictures really don’t do it justice. I tried to get Campy Bob to wade out there in order to lend a bit of perspective as to its size, but he was immersed in scouring the land for the the deadly and aggressive Gator-Cottonmouth, known in these parts to eschew simple biting in favor of busting a cap in your ass. Bob was once run off his dock by an entire gang of GatorCotton’s of the Crip variety, each and every one of them mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Another real pretty shot of the swamp. True confession time… I had a little problem with the camera in low light situations. Simply put, didn’t nothin’ come out worth damn in low light. We encountered a great little Water Moccasin chillin’ on a cypress knee… in low light. We also ran across a variety of big nappy spiders… either in low light or so damn close to the boat that I wasn’t real concerned with playing shutterbug at the time, instead opting to concentrate fully on holding in my girlish screams.

Say it with me… “Damn That Low Light!”

One creature I did manage to snap a pretty neat looking pic of was this Turkey Buzzard. Very cool, creepy looking stuff, says I. Even more creepy considering what it seemed to bode given the fact that:
a: it seemed to be just hanging out there, waiting, and
b: we’d begun to get ourselves a bit lost.
Just then we turned the corner and ran smack dab into…

A GIANT MANEATING ALLIGATOR!

No… I can’t do it. No, we didn’t. Nope. Sorry. I took this at state park we’d visited the day before. Just trying to lend a little excitement to this otherwise mundane account, as well as make myself feel better for the fact that we didn’t run into gator one in the wild during our hunting. (And only one stinkin’ snake as well, and unphotographeable to boot. I mean, I’m glad for what we did get to see, but give up the reptile love, cantcha? This place is supposed to be “teeming with canebrakes”… whutever!)

We did run across this pretty lady trying to get her egg-lay on while on the trail to the swamp. While she’d dug her hole she’d not yet begun to drop, so we encouraged her take her nesting elsewhere and off of the trail oft travelled via four-wheeler by the rampant South Georgian Hessian. She hissed at me for having the audacity to interrupt, but opted to move on just the same.
This is not a blurry picture. You would not believe how quickly this turtle would move. She was, like, bionic or something. Trust me pal, I was lucky to have managed to get this one shot. She darn near went straight for my throat for it, too.Shut up. It’s true.

We found our way back out of the swamp, narrowly averted the terror of the Albany Mall (truly a fate far worse than being lost in any swamp), saw a multitude of deer that had apparently formed a pact to taunt me by remaining far enough away to avoid being photographed, and, for a time, trailed what we thought might have been a coyote, though it could have been a dog. A huge, slathering, demon beast of a dog. Or just a regular old dog. Of the three, I’d be most impressed with option two, happiest with option one and least surprised with option three. So lets just call it a coyote, ok?

We cooked up falafel, watched a terrible movie (“I want to be a real boy so my mommy will love me!” Kid, people in hell want snoopy sno-cone machines, and I want this movie to stop sucking. If you’re looking for the Bloo Fairy get the hell in line), hung out in the tipi and planned a bit of interior design improvements, invented a new form of music, spoke poorly of as many people as we possibly could, formulated plans for a reality rendezvous, and ultimately had a fine time.Thanks to Eric for enviting, entertaining and tolerating me. And a hearty shout-out to Campy Bob too. Thanks for keeping us safe from large predators on the swamp by ensuring our presence was known through the ancient technique known as “lip flapping”. Nope, we weren’t gonna be startled by sneaking up on nothin’.
Oh, and thanks for the boat, the time and the hospitality, too.

Werd!

Click Here to check out some pictures of flowers around the hizzy. Caution; these pics is darn near twice the size of the ones on this page. Slow loaders will be sad.