Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Jenn and I were up pretty late last night watching that confusing movie. A long night’s sleep didn’t help my confusion at all.

We went to the ‘Taco Stand’ for lunch. I had two crispy meat tacos and chips with cheese dip. I really love their cheese dip.

After lunch we stopped by the magazine store and got two bottles of water for our trip to the botanical gardens. Yesterday Jenn asked me to check to make sure they are going to be open today since it’s a holiday. I went to their website and saw this:

The Garden is open daily 8:00 am to 6:00 pm October-March, and 8:00 am to 8:00 pm April-September. The Visitor Center is open Tuesday through Saturday 9:00 am to 4:30 pm and on Sundays 11:30 am to 4:30 pm excepting official University of Georgia holidays. The Garden Room Cafe serves lunch daily except Mondays.

Unfortunately NO part of the garden was open today. The main gates were closed as we drove up to the entrance.

Not to be discouraged, we continued on down the road in this rural area. We passed by an official UGA farm-type place. When we got to the end of the main road we turned around. On the way back, Jenn suggested we stop at the farm.

We pulled into the (deserted) farm and walked around some. There was a throng of horses standing near a fence just begging to be petted.

With no one to stop us, we helped ourselves and petted the horses. One in particular seemed to be the alpha horse, demanding most of the attention.

After spending some time with the horses we walked around the ‘farm’ area. We came upon a pen full of pigs. When they saw us approach, about half of them jumped up and ran toward the fence. They made a great ’squealing’ noise as they hobbled around. Jenn asked me how I can possibly eat bacon after seeing the filthy pigs.

We walked down an overgrown path to two cows who were sitting off by themselves. I snapped some photos of the cows and this particular one came out funny. The cow on the left looks as if he only has two legs. I’m not sure what exactly happened here.

After the cows, we continued on down a dirt road to a closed gate with another fence (and a horse) behind that. We climbed over the gate and spent some time with the horse.

In the distance we saw a beautiful field with a large, lone tree. Around this tree were some horses grazing. I took several photos of this scene. I felt bad for not having my polarizer on the camera, and wished the sky was bluer instead of cloudy. It was difficult to expose correctly without blowing out the sky. As it was, I had to underexpose two full stops (in P mode) just to not get any blown highlights.

The lone horse had quite a personality. When Jenn rubbed his rear, he really liked it. In fact, he backed up against the gate as she rubbed him, pushing the gate outward.

Eventually a column of other horses approached us. The horse we were petting got a little more aloof as they approached. When they got to close to us, ‘our’ horse would literally fold his ears flat against his head and ‘charge’ the other horses away. It was pretty cool watching them interact this way.

Eventually we left the farm and went back to Athens. We took a short nap and went out for dinner at a sushi place called ‘Utage’. When I ordered a martini called something like “vanilla truffle’ Jenn made fun of me for having a girly drink. We had nigri and rolls. I was a very pleasant dinner and the atmosphere was nice.

After dinner it was pretty late to I gathered my things and drove back to Atlanta. When I got home, I uploaded my photos from today at the farm and made a photo album.