September 30, 2013

September 30, 2013 

We are in the town of Warm Springs, GA. It has that name because of the mildly heated hot springs here. Our first stop is Roosevelt’s Little White House State Historic Site. When FDR contracted polio, he came here in 1924 in the belief the waters had healing properties. He bought the local spa and turned it into a polio treatment center. He kept coming back for over twenty years. We spend an hour going through the museum about his life with a focus on his polio and his time here. It is interesting but way over priced. We take a quick tour of his home that became the second White House during his presidency. He died of a stroke here in 1945 while posing for a portrait. The unfinished painting hangs in the museum.

A few blocks away we stop to see the Historic Pools that Roosevelt and other polio victims used to exercise in.

From Warm Springs, we drove west into Alabama stopping at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park. In 1814 Andrew Jackson led an army here from Tennessee and surrounded 1000 Creek Indians who had built a fortress here on a large bend in the local river. Urged on by the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh, this band of Creeks went on the warpath, during the War of 1812, slaughtering settlers. Accompanying Jackson was a list of future stars including Sam Houston and Davy Crockett. The Creeks lost the battle opening Alabama to American settlement.

We drove around the small battlefield. After 200 years there is not much to see. Aimee and I both think the Alabama countryside is very scenic. Too bad it is so hot and humid in the summer.