Don's Travels: Charleston to Lake City

Today [Sunday, 14th October] we travelled from Charleston to Lake City in Florida. This morning we had a later start and warmer temperature as we left South Carolina passing through part of Georgia then on into the state of Florida.

We started with tree lined motorway,

but soon we had breaks exposing farmland.

Again we met the Army. This time they did the passing.

Driving on in beautiful weather we crossed into Georgia and stopped at at the "Mighty 8th Airforce Museum" just outside Savannah. Here we learnt how the 8th was set up early during WW11. As their web sight tells us... By mid-1944, the 8th AF had reached a total strength of more than 200,000 people (it is estimated that more than 350,000 Americans served in 8th AF during the war in Europe). At its peak, the 8th AF could dispatch more than 2,000 four-engine bombers and 1,000 fighters on a single mission. For these reasons, the 8th AF became known as the "Mighty Eighth". This is a great museum with well design displays, laid out in maze like structure that very successfully takes you through the history of both the 8th and WW11. For me, I was impressed with the fair depiction of the British effort prior to the US entry into the war.

At one point we went into a briefing in a Nissan, not the car but one of those semicircular corrugated iron huts. From here we went into audio-visual experience depicting what the ground crew went through. Here we found out that ground crews were in England for the duration of the war while flight crews went home after 25 missions, that is if they survived. The final presentation was a six screen, multi-light, and very load sound experience of a bomber raid over Germany. This included large fans firing up as the bombs doors opened and the bombs started falling.

The central area houses several aeroplanes used by the 8th during WW11, and a large mock-up of the Ploiesti raid on the Romanian oil fields.

In addition there is a large library and an extensive archive which would be a must for those interested in the 8th, the Americans air role during WW2, or the development of modern day US airforce from the early beginnings in the 40s.

From here we drove through this part of Georgia into Florida turn west at Jacksonville. Turning west was significant as we are now truly on the homeward journey back across the US to LA and our flight home.

The scenery started to change at the rest areas....

and we had breaks in the road-side trees exposing large areas of water and swamp land.

Another appearance were emergency telephone about every mile along the road. These were to continue westward and disappeared once we crossed into Mississippi the next day.