Classic City Roadgeeking

For the past 3 days, Mary and I were in Athens (a.k.a. "The Classic City") at the North Georgia United Methodists annual conference, which was held at The Classic Center.

When we didn't have to be in business or worship sessions, we took a walk around Downtown Athens to see the sights... and yes, do some "Classic City roadgeeking" (as you can see from the photo below)...

One of the sights we saw during one of our short ventures was the famous Confederate double-barreled cannon. This cannon never worked as intended since no one could get the barrels to fire simultaneously, but it sits in front of the Athens City Hall and symbolically points northward. Here's a shot of me next to this famous piece of artillery...

After the conference ended this afternoon, we set out on the final "classic roadgeek mission"... clinch 2 more counties.

First, we traveled eastward on US 78 Business/US 78/GA 10 into Oglethorpe County. Once we crossed the line and turned around, we headed toward our second county... Madison. While crossing back into Athens/Clarke County, we noticed that the sign on US 78/GA 10 westbound simply said "Clarke County" instead of "Athens-Clarke County". Here's the photo...

To clinch Madison County, we headed to the Athens Perimeter/Paul Broun Parkway (GA 10 Loop/GA 422) and proceeded northward. At the northeastern corner of the Perimeter, US 29/GA 8 continues northward and we followed it into Madison County (but not before stopping at the Burger King at the corner of US 29/GA 8 and GA 72 for a quick lunch break).

After lunch, we proceeded northward... and clinched Madison County. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! :)

We then headed back to Atlanta following US 29/GA 8 along the inner Athens Perimeter to GA 316. Incidentally, the US and other GA routes that follow the eastern and southern sections of the Perimeter were not shown on assurance markers. Here's an example...

You could, however, see the US route markers on the overhead BGSes. For BGS pictures, please see J.T. Legg's Peach State Roads GA 10 Loop webpage. BTW, GA 422 is not marked anywhere along the stretch that we traveled, thus it is apparently "secret" just like the 400-series Interstates.

On the last leg of our journey home, I did manage to take some pictures of the construction at the I-85/GA 316 merge and I'll share those with y'all soon.

I do need to mention one more thing... on the day of our 3rd wedding anniversary (Wednesday), we celebrated by eating dinner at The Varsity-Athens. It was her first time eating at a Varsity and we just loooooved those greasy, greasy onion rings (along with our dogs). To celebrate and commemorate Mary's first real Varsity experience, here's the photo I took of her with her empty onion ring boats... That's all for now. Thanks for reading and please come back again.