Terrell & Sheila, again

We are having a great time walking. My mother has a friend coming to visit and asked about what she ought to show of our dear hometown. I couldn't help but think as we strolled along the Oostanaula tonight that she couldn't go wrong taking her friend for an amble along the Riverwalk!

The swallows are entertainment enough for anyone. What frantic little graceful wonders, soaring, swooping, gliding, lighting briefly to add a fragment to a nest or feed a nestling, then off to swoop, soar, and glide again. Beautiful little birds!

The Cliff Sparrows build huge adobe cliff dwellings (above) to rival the Anasazi right there on the side of a busy modern highway bridge.

And the barn swallows with their fancy forked tails, too aloof for such a commune, build individual hanging mud huts (above) here and there farther under the bridge.

If birding's not your cup of tea, just take a gander at the pretty old buildings reflected in the water as you meander up the Oostanaula behind Broad Street up to the library and on to Ridge Ferry Park and the Chieftains Museum. Or detour on to Brioad itself and enjoy a real cup of tea at George Kastanias' Victorian Tea Room or a cup a' java at the Forrest Coffee Shop. Then check out the local history at the Floyd County History Museum on Broad.

Like machinery? Take a gander at the old Swing Bridge (Robert Redden Footbridge, above). This old railway bridge used to turn on this center column so steamboats could move up the Oostanaula. See the gears and wheels of the turntable?

Tonight we got in 4.5 miles along both sides of the river. Yesterday after church we took Daisy down t0 Heritage Park and back (2 miles). And Saturday we walked to Barron Stadium and sampled international foods at the Rome International Festival. We had a Chicken Curry Rice dish from the Indian community of South Africa, we had a beef and rice dish from Korea. Bright red chicken from India, Dulce de Leche Cake from Liberia, some wonderful Potato-Rice-Meat croquette and a Cabbage-Meat roll made by my friend Widad of Kurdistan (Iraq). While we were there we walked a mile on the football track, then across the river to the Salvation Army store on Second Avenue, where I bought two 25¢ paperbacks and a coffee cup with the Clocktower on it for 39¢. (2.5 miles) That brings our total for April to 26.5.

(I took the pictures above.)