The trip to St. Mary's and Cumberland Island was great. I'd recommend Cumberland in the winter any time. In August it sucks buggy, humid, balls. In January I love it.

We decided that we'd stray from the big interstates on this trip, so at Macon we got off I-75 and picked up Hwy 23, the road to McRae. Along that stretch we ran across Watley's Farm Road, where you can find Mr. Charles Watley's place. He builds stuff out of things nobody else want. City slickers would call Mr. Watley a folk artist. He doesn't want to be called an artist because artists have to be dead before they get anything accomplished.

Atop a former Gulf station sign pole, with its base in a quonset hut, is a spinning girder with a mannequined boat on one end and a big ol' bass on the other. It runs on electricity, and once every rotation a little flywheel about halfway down the post makes the mannequin lean back and put tension on the fishing pole. The eagle in the center is only balanced on its bill. Nothing else attaches it to the structure. Here, have a look for yourself.

And his yard is just full of stuff like this. "Pulling" a kerosene tank (sealed with rivets, before welding was in use) is a near life-size horse constructed of screen door screen, tires, um stuff. I got the photo proof.

And of course I got the Spielberg shot, because the clouds were just perfect for it.

This is modeled after the shot in "The Color Purple" where Spielberg had the camera on the ground shooting up at a cow's chin and the sky above it. That shot has always stuck in my head.

Anyway, Mr. Watley will hand you a card that has that funky Life/Death design on it (hold it one way and it says Life; hold it upside down and it says Death). The card says "The wages of sin is death. The gift of God is life." Or something like that. He also has one of those tacky covered wells with a big sign that says "What you see inside this well will determine whether you go to heaven or hell." You will not be allowed to leave until you look. It's a mirror. Oooooh. Deep. Like a well. Get it? Har.

We drove on down to McRae where the Statue of Liberty is. It's just amazing. I felt like a big goober going to take pictures of it while the town's residents drove by, probably laughing at me. That's probably why they put it there in the first place, to make people stop and take pictures so the locals would have someone to laugh at.

I tell you what, though. I really wish I was Weetabix or Marn so that I could really give Miss Liberty's apparent boobular oddity the treatment it so richly deserves.

The original SoL isn't quite as stacked as this one. I'd be willing to bet that most of the Lions Club members who helped build this thing are men. And I'm pretty sure that the full-size SoL in New York has feet. This Liberty seems to be cut off at the shins.

There's not much to see in McRae besides this statue other than some picturesque abandoned brick buildings. And I think maybe the Tackiest Furniture Store in the World was in McRae, too.

Can you tell from my writing that we were reading the new Sweet Potato Queens book on the trip? I was reading aloud from it to Deb in bed last night, too.

On Saturday evening, we stopped at the el-cheapo motel. It really wasn't bad if you didn't expect the amenities that come with most motel rooms. There was a kitchenette with a refrigerator, which was cool. But there was no complementary shampoo, only two towels and two washcloths, and the "carpet" was indoor/outdoor. Kind of fitting because the kitchenette chairs were those plastic lawn chairs that you can buy at drug and grocery stores.

The best thing about El-Cheapo Inn was the humongous over-compensation truck that I got to park next to�a super tricked out Ford F350.

This had to be the baby of some military guy with more disposable income than he knows what to do with. It had one of those broom-like mudflaps going all the way across the back, all the extra lights, tool boxes, a wench, extra rails, furry dice in the cab. Mostly I love the chrome-plated smoke-stack thingies like the ones the semis have. What does a pickup truck even use those for? Is it just for looks? I don't know. I never saw the guy who owned the truck.

I'll leave you with a photo of my beautiful wife on the ferry to Cumberland Island. We got to see dolphins racing in the wake right next to the ferry and I think (I hope) I got some excellent film shots of that.