My wife and I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit so many different places, over the years. That is always an education in itself. Not just seeing the different geographies, but also interacting with people from different areas, who have different backgrounds and experiences.
Because both of us have very demanding jobs, it is usually easier for us to take occasional long weekends, rather than a full week’s vacation. So that’s what we often do, mostly exploring nearby places of interest, or visiting family and friends.
One weekend, some years back, we opted for a visit to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s about 90 minutes north of Atlanta, so not too far, but on the outer range of where we would normally drive for a long weekend. Our goal was to visit the Tennessee Aquarium, on the waterfront on the west side of that town. What an amazing place!
We have been to a handful of Aquariums, here and there: Atlanta, Baltimore, Charleston, Tampa; this one was by far the most amazing. As I recall, it is five floors tall, and each floor has two separate wings, each representing a particular river system: the Tennessee River Valley, the Mississippi, Amazon, the Nile – you get the picture. An ingenious design to introduce visitors to the various aquatic creatures who inhabit those river systems!
The entrance is on the outside of the building, on the waterfront plaza facing the Tennessee River downtown. It houses over 12,000 creatures, representing some 800 species. An awesome place!
The first time we were there, it took us over four hours to walk down to the bottom floor, and we were just overwhelmed. We went back another time, several years later, and this time were better able to absorb what we saw, for having had that initial introduction. Just amazing!
One creature I will never forget seeing there for the first time was an “alligator snapping turtle,” a species native to the TN River. I had never heard of it before, and it looked quite ferocious!
As a child, growing up in Savannah, I was lucky to live only a few blocks away from the Savannah Science Museum, later known as the Savannah Youth Museum. It was a relatively small facility, but with several fascinating exhibits: A series of snake cages, showing a variety of local species; a planetarium, with weekend shows; a diorama of early native American Indian life; and a rock and mineral display, with a blacklight that showed the different crystals more clearly. Just fascinating to us little kids!
My next-door best friend and I often rode our bikes over there on Saturday mornings, after chores, and spent hours wandering through those exhibits. Sadly, it eventually closed, due to a lack of funding, and was eventually replaced by a medical office complex. But that’s another story.
The “alligator snapping turtle” we first saw at the TN Aquarium was quite large, compared to the much-smaller terrapins we often saw on the road to Tybee, in the summers, on the way to the beach, when I was little. It was distinguished by a large beak, and the ability to jump up several inches off the ground, when faced with any perceived threat. I had never seen that before! An astonishing species.
That became an important “recognition point,” several years later, when we attended a memorable Rotary conference in Rome, GA. (More on that later.) It was late summer, and was held at Berry College.
(I had a friend who went there, many years ago, but I had never been there before. Another friend attended the much smaller Shorter college, just down the road a bit. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was a teacher, for a short while, many years ago, at the Darlington Prep High School – the third main educational facility in Rome. But that’s another story too.)
One of the landmarks on that Berry campus is a gorgeous English chapel, where services are held. When driving around that campus, on arrival, we slowly pulled into the circular drive behind that chapel, and saw a turtle in the middle of the road.
As we often do, when we spot turtles in the middle of the roadway, I pulled over and stopped, intending to pick it up (carefully, by its sides) and relocate it safely to the side of the road, so it would not get run over by someone traveling too fast, ant not paying attention.
But when I got closer and saw this one, I saw that it was bigger than ordinary turtles; and when I got a bit closer, it jumped up, and snapped at me! That’s when I recognized it as an “alligator snapping turtle,” and wisely retreated back to my car.
I was so glad, that day, that I had first seen that species of turtle, foreign to my home grounds, and knew to keep my distance. But it was amazing to see one in the wild.
We learn things, as we live and travel! That is what travel is all about. I am so glad that we had that opportunity.
Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife are both long-time Rotarians, and live in eastern Liberty County with their changing passel of orphaned rescue cats. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_semmes@yahoo. com.