Providence Canyon State Park, Lumpkin, Georgia: A One Day Visit

April 12, 2001, was my 34th birthday, and Anna and I both took the day off work to celebrate. I wanted to go someplace interesting and exciting, but someplace fairly close--we didn't want to leave the new kitties home alone for too long. Jupiter, Luna, and Tesseract are, after all, only 10 weeks old!

I'd read about Providence Canyon State Park in one of my many travel books (Touring the Backroads of North and South Georgia by Victoria and Frank Logue, which I recommend highly), and I really wanted to see it. I didn't realize quite how far away it was--close to 200 miles from Lawrenceville--or I might not have picked it. Given that, then, I'm glad I didn't know how far it was, because it was well worth the nearly four hours on the road.

Providence Canyon has been called Georgia's “Little Grand Canyon,” and I'm sure you can tell why from the photographs below. Unlike the big Grand Canyon in Arizona, however, Providence Canyon is not a millions-of-years-old geological marvel; instead, it is a less-than-two-centuries old testament to the damage man can do to his environment. What is today a canyon that reaches depths of up to 150 feet was, only 150 years ago, a five-foot-deep ditch that began forming in a Stewart County farmer's back yard. The same poor farming techniques that led to the erosion that created the canyon left 40,000 acres in Stewart County unfarmable.

Even if it was born from something negative, Providence Canyon is beautiful:

Providence Canyon State Park wasn't founded until 1971; before that, the canyon and the surrounding area was just a peculiar part of rural Georgia. As such, it collected its fair share of abandoned vehicles.

Since the flora and fauna of the area had done an admirable job of adapting themselves to the abandoned vehicles, it was less damaging to leave the old rusty cars and trucks than to remove them when the park was being created:

On one of the trails, we encountered a small green lizard, who showed us his best “keep away from me, I'm a big, bad reptile” throat-puffing pose:

But the most important thing, of course, was that Anna and I looked very cute in our respective hats:

Three New Additions to the Family: Tesseract, Luna, and Jupiter

Wednesday night, Anna and I adopted three adorable eight-week old kittens from Jennifer's Pet Rescue in Dallas, Georgia.

The new kitties--from left to right, Jupiter, Luna (on the box), and Tesseract (crawling under the box)--settled into their new home in no time:

They had a good time exploring Anna's desk:

They seemed to appreciate the little homey touches we've added to the room in which they will spend the next few days, until we're ready to introduce them to Seuss and Lilly. That's Luna climbing up on the stool thingy, while Jupiter hides inside:

Tesseract (you can call her Tessie) had a great time playing with the little pretend mouse:

Jupiter is proving himself to be a champion jumper and chaser:

After all that playing, they were just plain exhausted, so they curled up on Anna's desk chair for a good nights sleep:

(Have you ever in your life seen anything so cute?)

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I originally posted this on the old Planet Burdett, but brought it into the family blog-version on November 13, 2017. Luna has been gone for about four years, but Tessie and Jupiter are still with us.

Zoo Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia: A One Day Visit

When we entered the zoo, the flamingoes seemed excited to see us:

The rhino, on the other hand, didn't seem to care, and the giraffe was fleeing from us:

The elephant couldn't interrupt his lunch to say, "Hi!"

The orangutan, though, ran up to give us a hearty hand-clasp and a sincere, "Thanks for visiting!"

Willie B.'s last baby is well-loved by his mother:

In the big cats area, we saw both a lion and a tiger:

We paused for a moment to soak in the beautiful day:

The current darlings of Zoo Atlanta are the giant pandas, who were quite happy munching on bamboo while we were there:

The high point of the day was seeing the red pandas (no relation to the giant pandas), who are Anna's favorites, and who we were lucky enough to see being hand-fed:

(I originally published this post on my Web site on the date shown above, and transferred it to our family blog on October 24, 2017.)

Sunrises

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I took these pictures in 2000 when I still worked at ExecuTrain; they're all of the sky over the lake behind our building in Alpharetta. I posted them to an early version of Planet Burdett early in 2001, at which time I had already left ExecuTrain and was working at MeasureUp. I added this post to the current version of Planet Burdett on November 19, 2017.

Snow Day!

Here's Seuss, taking a little nap in the morning:

Here's my house in the snow:

Here are the trees by the creek:

Me, standing in the front yard:

Me, sitting on the front porch, admiring the snow covered trees:

And finally, a lone walnut tree in the front yard:

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I posted these pictures back in 2000 to share with Anna, and added them to the current version of Planet Burdett on November 19, 2017.