Our humongous camp site
Today we drove 193 miles north, leaving Florida and coming to Savannah, Georgia. Harris had made reservations at Skidaway Island State Park, which is only a few miles outside the city. It is an absolutely beautiful park. The sites are huge and far apart, although there isn’t much underbrush, so you can see into other people’s sites. There are huge trees everywhere, which we think are live oak. The trees are draped with Spanish moss. The park is shady and cool on these hot days. There are electrical hookups, and wonder of wonders, even cable TV at the sites! Unfortunately, Harris has to drive to the office to get wi-fi, but he’ll live with that to be in such a beautiful, close in park. We walked around, talking to other campers, especially a couple who had another class B van. When the bugs started coming out, we retreated back to Howie for dinner and cards (Judy won) and planning for tomorrow.
A reconstruction of a Civil War redoubt
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 (day 214)
One of many trains in the museum
We took a walk around our park this morning, then drove into Savannah. We parked at the visitor center and purchased a book for walking tours of the historic district. The city is divided into 4 different tours, and we walked through 2 of them today before the heat melted us.
The oldest RR administration building in US
Savannah is a beautiful city, full of restored buildings and large trees dripping with Spanish moss. There isn’t one central square. There are 24 squares, which are like parks, scattered all over. The streets simply split around them, then join up again on the other side.
Haitian blacks that fought in Revolutionary War
The first tour we walked today was called “The Booming West Side”. It was also closest to the visitor center, so it was a good place for us to start. Our first stop was Battlefield Memorial Park, the center of fighting here during the Revolutionary War. French and American troops launched an attack, but lost the battle. Coincidentally, there was a geocache at the sign. We looked and looked, but didn’t find it. After we had gone on to the next stop, we came back and saw a woman unrolling the log. She told us where it had been, (right where we had looked! Really!), in exchange for using our pen.
Our second stop was at the Roundhouse Railroad Museum, which in 1835 was a train construction and repair facility for the Central of Georgia Railway.
One square had a neat statue called the Haitian Monument. This monument honors a group of 700 free men of color from the island of Haiti who fought beside the Americans and French in the Siege of Savannah in 1779. This group was the largest unit of men of African descent to fight in the American Revolution. There was also a cache here that Harris found. It was a fake screw in a road sign.
One of only 2 world cotton exchanges back then
One interesting building we saw was the old Cotton Exchange, built in 1887. At the time, Savannah and Liverpool, England, were the only two places in the world where the price of cotton was quoted.
Another stop that held a cache (one we found) was the Old Harbor Light, built in 1858. This beacon was built by the US government to guide ships past the hulls of sunken ships in the channel. The British had sunk ships in 1779 in an attempt to prevent the French navy from entering Savannah. The large anchors displayed around the light are remnants of historic ships that have been discovered over the years by dredging the channel.
Inside of City Hall
Judy enjoyed walking past “the Pirate House” and reading about it. It was originally a seaman’s tavern. It is rumored that an underground tunnel connected the rum cellar to the river where drunken men were placed aboard ships to later awake at sea as unwitting crew members. Robert Louis Stevenson’s” Treasure Island” was said to be inspired by events that occurred here.
City Hall’s gold plated dome
We passed the Waving Girl Statue. Florence Martus (1868-1943), became known as “The Waving Girl” by sailors around the world. She spent most of her life on Elba Island (in the channel). From her porch of her home on the island, she waved a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night at ships entering or leaving the port of Savannah. One legend has it that she had promised her sweetheart to greet every ship until his return.
Pirate house tavern
We stopped at a café for lunch and a respite, then started on our second walking tour, called “Along the Riverfront”. The first stop, Oglethorpe’s Bench is a stone bench on the site where Olgethorpe (founder of the colony of Georgia) first camped in 1733. We noticed a man walking slowly around, looking at his phone as he did. We asked, are you geocaching? Of course he was, and together we found a cache at the bench.
Waving Girl statue
City Hall is a gorgeous building, with a gold gilded dome. It was built in 1905, and the inside features an impressive rotunda 30 feet wide and 70 feet high, with beautiful stained glass windows in the dome.
We passed 2 cannons, which are called “Washington’s guns”. George Washington presented them to the city in 1791. The cannons had been captured from the British at the Battle of Yorktown.
Two interesting signs we saw
We walked back along the River Street, until we saw a Dot Stop sign. Savannah has a free bus service. We were so happy when we got on the bus because it was air-conditioned! And, the seats were soft! Which was a good thing, because the first street we drove over was an old cobble street that would have really rattled our bones without that padding. The bus took us back to the visitor’s center and Howie. We drove back to the state park, and had a light dinner because of our big lunch.
Thank goodness for the DOT transport system
Total miles driven today=33
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