The open road – Highway 319, near Thomasville, GA
For several months prior to our October 19, 2013 departure on the road trip that we dubbed The First University Icons Tour Of The South, Carolyn spent countless hours researching prospective colleges and universities in Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. We allotted three weeks for the trip and recognized that a second, future trip will be necessary to visit the entire South.
A stroke of luck brought us remarkably good weather. It only rained once during the three week adventure and it did so in the dead of night. Hooray!
The map below traces our route. The red and blue dots represent stops along the way, but not every school; there may be more than one college at a dot. For example, we visited a half dozen schools in Atlanta; two in Montgomery, AL; three in Spartanburg, SC; etc. All told, we visited 78 campuses and logged 5,199 miles, door to door. What an experience!
The range of campuses and architecture we encountered was astounding in every way imaginable. Scale, design, landscaping, upkeep, history, details, ambiance, and the general vibe are among the variables that make each campus unique and delightful to visit. The buildings we photographed, collectively, form a national treasure.
Given the short time frame we have available, we work pretty much from sun up to sun down, occasionally skipping lunch, so our daily reward was to YELP restaurants in the area of our hotel and to seek out a highly rated ethnic or local favorite for dinner. Halloween night was particularly memorable. We had just finished up at Stetson University (DeLand, FL), which is a spectacular and meticulously maintained campus. As we headed to the hotel, we drove through the neighborhood just west of the campus and were treated (pardon the pun) with hoards of “treat or treaters” along the way, elaborately dressed in clever costumes. In our hometown of Chicago, ugly weather often forces revelers to conceal their costumes with coats. In contrast, the weather at dusk in DeLand was an ideal 75 degrees. Inspired, we rummaged around in our suitcases and discovered that we had, fortuitously, matching “costumes” … orange tee shirts and black pants. 😉 YELP revealed a German restaurant, Hollerbach’s Willow Tree Café, with excellent reviews, so we decided to give it a try. We were surprised to find that the staff were all imaginatively dressed in costumes, as were many of the customers. Our server was a Greek Goddess. A nearby table was handled by Bat Girl. The costumes, the outstanding German cuisine and the live German entertainment made for a memorable evening. We momentarily forgot that we had to hit the road early the next morning.
We continue to be so favorably impressed by the students that we encounter: Young people that notice us and unabashedly ask if we need directions or assistance. We often end up speaking with them for ten or twenty minutes. At Huntingdon University (Montgomery, AL), Miss Huntingdon, herself, spotted us and volunteered to lead us on an impromptu and thorough tour of her school. Thank you Victoria! And it’s not just students. At University of Alabama at Birmingham, a chemistry professor stopped and offered pointers about the campus. Thank you Michael! Thank you to all the students, faculty and staff who stopped to chat with us and to point out aspects about your campus that we would otherwise never have learned.
Next on the agenda is the task of cataloging and tagging the thousands of photos I took; and then the process of culling the best ones and correcting and adjusting the selected few. After that Carolyn will upload them to our website. This process will take about two to three months. If you are interested in knowing when the photos of a particular campus will be available, just send us an email and we will email you when it’s on our site.
Meanwhile, Carolyn is already planning the next trip, which will include Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and perhaps Oklahoma and Kansas.
Written by: John Brzezinski 11-20-13
