Forsyth, GA

We made it to Forsyth, GA, an hour or so south of Atlanta, and could not find a state park, so we pulled into a KOA.

It is a very nice place, but I really like the state parks, if the parks are well-maintained. That last place in Tennessee was extremely nice, at least what we could see of it. I would definitely return there.

The ladies at the KOA desk were very nice to Bernie. She suspected they were somewhat pressed because of the number of people coming in, but everybody treats Bernie nicely. If I had gone in, I would expect a respectable campground lady to set her Doberman onto me. It just works out that way.

I think that I could not operate a campground. I was looking the Guest Services Guide here (I'm probably the only guy who reads all the rules) and noticed that we're not allowed to smoke in areas marked “No Smoking.” Really. You see? People cannot even understand signs, and with my patience and warm, fuzzy disposition I would boot somebody not smart enough to understand signs. And I would comment on their parentage and implore them not to reproduce.

That would not be good for my business. That is why I could not own a campground.

But I tossed the rules aside and vowed not to associate with anybody smoking in a no smoking area.

Before our trip, I planned stuff pretty carefully. Bernie blessed my work and said that was the schedule she had been thinking about, also. She arrived at it by thinking about it, but I had to work it out with a spreadsheet, calculating speed, distance, fuel stops, rest stops and arrived at travel time. My work was much more precise than hers.

Planning sometimes doesn't work, though, and on that note we hit Atlanta at 4:30, just in time for everybody to be going home from work.

Instead of taking the bypass around the city, we went through the middle of it on the way in. Georgia employes the same nitwit signage experts we find in so many states. The big overhead arrow directing us to the bypass pointed exactly between two lanes. I picked the wrong lane, but on the way in, nothing, nada, no traffic, because everybody was going north to go home, bumper to bumper and stopped dead for quite a long line of cars.

On the southside going out it was packed on our side. We slipped into a comfortable spot in the HOV lane, however, and blew through town with almost no problem. Only one heart-pounding stop because of a Rebel who didn't study hard in drivers' ed when it came to merging onto a limited access highway.

We jockeyed the Circus Wagon through a little jam on the far south side leaving town. Easy traveling.

There is a solution to this horrendous traffic, with thousands of cars each carrying one person: Buy a couple thousand buses, take the loss for a short while, and tell everybody that on Jan. 1, 2012, it will cost $45 a day to enter the city in a car with one person, $40 for two people down to $30 for four people. And charge $6 a day for the bus with attendants on board serving refreshments for a couple bucks. I don't know what the numbers and time-line should be, but you get the idea. You have to see this traffic to believe it, and those people around big cities see it a lot and believe it.

Tomorrow we press on to Florida and get in some visiting, and maybe see an ocean or two.