Jimmy Carter

We stopped in Atlanta to visit the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum on our rainy trip to Florida.  I wasn't a big fan of some of his policies as president, but I always felt that he was one of the most decent, honest, and moral presidents that we have had.

A replica of President Carter's oval office. 

Further down the highway we stopped at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Georgia where President Carter grew up, and where he still lives today.  After stopping at the Plains High School Museum and Visitors Center to watch a film about Jimmy's life, we headed out to see the sights.  We stopped at the Maranatha Baptist Church,  where he still attends church today and still teaches Sunday School.  We toured his boyhood home, farm, and the family's commissary.  In downtown Plains, we visited the Plains Depot where he ran his presidential campaign (it was the only empty building in town that had a bathroom!), saw the old Carter Peanut warehouses, and brother Billy Carter's gas station.

Billy's gas station.

The Maranatha Baptist Church.

Boyhood home and farm.

Downtown Plains.

From rural Georgia, we headed to Suntan Terrace on Nokomis Beach, for a week of R & R.  We had beautiful, warm weather while we were there, and enjoyed our beach walks, sea food, shelling, and shark tooth hunting.  One new activity this year was stopping at the Manatee Viewing Center at Apollo Beach.  There were literally dozens of manatees congregating in the warm waters discharged from the Big Bend Power Station.  For as big and cumbersome as they look, they can move fast when something scares them! 

We decided to take the Alabama route home this trip; it's an hour longer, but saves you from having to drive through Atlanta.  In rural Alabama, we stopped at a couple of roadside stands.  I bought some Buffalo Bob's alligator jerky at one, and the old farmer's wife bought a bonsai tree at another. 
We had a safe uneventful trip home.

And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;
Genesis 18:1