Despite a pre-departure prayer, I worried about my brakes for quite some time after we set out and crossed into Georgia just a couple of miles from our hotel, but by the time we stopped for gas just a few miles into the Peach State, I had satisfied myself that the brakes were still working quite well.
Also reassuring was my memory of the previous day’s controlled hurtle on the down side of Monteagle, which reminded me that I’d been very conservative with the Bronco’s brakes ever since I got it. Given that Broncos of this vintage have typical truck brakes that wouldn’t stop a snail on a dime, this is only natural. But I do believe that the excellent deceleration I get just by taking my foot off the gas pedal helps a lot. I’ve driven the Bronco hundreds of miles more since arriving in Peachtree City, and my fears have long since been put to rest.
If you’ve never driven on an interstate in the deep South, you probably have no idea how limited the scenery is. Freeways are lined with pine trees of the fluffy Southern type, which do an effective job of screening traffic noise but also block motorists from seeing much except the traffic around them. In most cases this is something of a nuisance, but when we reached the outskirts of Atlanta and turned onto Interstate 285 to pass west of the city — in the midst of normal weekday traffic (I use the word “normal” in its relative sense, of course) — I found that the lack of distractions made it much easier to concentrate on the tactical requirements of driving in heavy fast traffic.
Good luck continued to follow us during this latest adventure, putting us by apparent accident into the lanes we needed to be in as we approached interchanges. In retrospect the passage from Marietta in the north to Fairburn in the south went very smoothly — but we both had a bad case of the jitters long after we exited Interstate 85 at Fairburn and followed Georgia 74 south through Tyrone to Peachtree City.
We were early; it had been a very short drive on this day and we had held off as long as we could on our departure from Chattanooga, but we arrived well before check-in time at the hotel where we would be staying. So by mutual consent we headed first to the Mail Boxes Etc. location where we had arranged to have our mail forwarded. We found the shopping center easily enough, but the care its designers had taken to conceal the expanse of asphalt in the parking lot from casual passersby also helped to conceal the names of businesses, both at the main mall and among the outbuildings, from our much less than casual study. We found our target only by systematically covering the entire area until we found it. As ugly as most conventional malls may be, at least there the customers don’t waste gas and produce excess emissions by driving around for several minutes trying to find a particular store. There’s a downside to everything, and Peachtree City pays for its pretty visual environment with extra smog.
After taking care of that, we checked into our hotel room, and then rented a small storage unit at the adjacent self-storage business, and unloaded our vehicles for the first time since the day we left Alaska. Which, I think, constitutes the true end of this journey, even though there still remains much to do.
ADDENDUM: In December 1999 we moved out of the temporary quarters in Peachtree City and into our new home in Coweta County, where we still live. Although our mailing address is “Newnan,” we are actually about four miles up the interstate from the main Newnan exit, and many nearby neighborhoods actually have Sharpsburg addresses. The best identification for our area, Thomas Crossroads, isn’t recognized by the U.S. Postal Service—though given the population growth out this way, even just since we moved here, that may change.
