andalusia

A couple of Saturdays ago we made a day trip to Milledgeville to visit Andalusia...the home of Flannery O'Connor who happens to be one of Claude's favorite authors. Considering what a voracious reader he is that says a lot in itself and so we were both super excited that the home where she spent her last years living and writing was just an hour or two down the road from us here.

Here's a quick recap of the trip:

I tend to feel like I "live" out of my car sometimes and let's just say my car is typically less pristine than Claude's...we took my car for the day and Claude offered to stop on the way out of town to vacuum it out for me. I told him that wouldn't be necessary (I was ready to get on the road!!!) and I can't remember how exactly he responded but this is my response to him insulting the current state of my car.

I LOVE barbeque and it seems there's less of an abundance of good bbq places around here than in Philly/Jackson. [In particular we sure do miss the Hickory Pit...we definitely had some meals to remember there with Mir, Michael, Candice, Jim, etc.:)] Once we got to Milledgeville it was definitely time to grab lunch and this looked oh so enticing to us walking down the street...

Rest assured I for one left a happy camper having eaten the most delicious smoked pulled chicken sandwich. YUM!

While we were waiting on our meal Claude planned our stops for the day using this brochure he picked up at the visitors center. [Turns out the library at the local college even had a Flannery O'Connor room with some personal belongings of hers - her typewriter, family pictures, paintings, and a collection of books of course.]

Post lunch we drove to the outskirts of town to the main attraction for the day - Andalusia. It was a really nice day and as the house and barn and other buildings were set on a considerable piece of land with pastures around, peacocks in a cage out back, and a pond down the hill from the house it felt like we were in a different world for the day. A lot slower and more peaceful than our everyday lives at work at least:) I'll post a couple of pictures, but considering that I'm not a photographer and that I don't have a super duper DSLR yet you'll have to take my word that it was even more cool than it looks!

There were signs like this all over the property to give background on all the little details of the farm. I'll just post this one...

Claude's most prized picture of the day...standing right where Flannery O'Connor once walked herself!

One of the peacocks mentioned earlier...

A couple of shots from the inside and outside of the house - we both thought it was kept up very well especially to be run by what we imagine is largely volunteer effort:

And lastly the obligatory self portrait:)


In other news around our house today was Claude's last day as an intern and tomorrow begins what will be year two of five! So we're 20% through ... which also means that it's been a whole year (and a week or two) since this happened...

...in case you were wondering this was snapped right after we closed on our house and right before we came in the front door for the first time sans realtor:) The ensuing process of unloading that PACKED Uhaul is something I'm glad I won't have to endure again for at least another 4 years!

Farewell year 1:)