#2: [06-Jul-02]

#3: [30-Oct-12] (incomplete)

21-Feb-2000 -- It’s a holiday! Thanks to ol' George and Abe, my neighbor Vic and I had the day off. So with a few minutes of planning and another Hardee breakfast we set off at 0800 hours on a new confluence hunt. This time we went south of our hometown of Centerville down Interstate 75 to the city of Cordele. Getting off the superhighway, (if you are passing through Georgia from parts unknown on your way to Disney World, it’s the turnoff with the big Atlas rocket) we turned to the west on US 280 and headed off toward Lake Blackshear. Passing by the Georgia Veteran's Memorial State Park to our right, on the lake, we went on down the road four miles to the huge city of Cobb. Really, Cobb was so small we blew right past the turnoff back to the north. It was a small paved road that soon turned into a dirt road made of the typical Georgia red clay (picture #2). This road led to an even smaller dirt road to the right. We followed this until the GPS unit pointed 90 degrees to our left. There just happened to be a turnoff into the field right where we needed it, so this is where we parked the car (picture #7). The confluence is over the slight rise in the extreme left in the picture. There just also happened to be a big No Trespassing sign at this turnoff also (picture #3). Since this was in a very large commercial cotton field that was harvested months ago, we could see for miles in all directions, the southern people are very friendly, and we felt we could talk our way out of any charges, we took a calculated risk and went for it.

The confluence was about a quarter mile into the field. From the car we had to walk up a slight hill and down toward a marshy runoff (picture #4). I was hoping that we would find the spot before we had to cross the ditch and approach the wellstand and pump for the industrial sprinkler on the other side. This would greatly reduce our chances of getting off if we were caught in the field. We found the point about 25 yards from the water (picture #1). We took a picture of each other in the spot. This is me (picture #5) and Vic (picture #6).

Leaving the cotton patch, we followed our TopoZone map up the road to find where the landing strip was, but didn’t see anything that resembled a runway. Just more of the same cotton fields. Leaving there we stopped in at an honest-to-goodness redneck store complete with a bait shop and its own hotdog restaurant and grabbed a soft drink. Deciding not to take the interstate highway back, we took back roads up to the city of Vienna, home of "The Big Pig Jig." We finally arrived home at 1100 hours, tired but happy.