We enjoyed our week in Orlando and we were ready for the next destination. For this leg we would stay a night in Savannah, GA and then head to Charleston, SC for our next weeks stay. The trip was 4.5 hours per Google and then another 2 hours the next day. This made for a great couple days having some lighter travel on each leg.
When you think of Georgia what do you think of? For me its peaches and that song "Georgia on My Mind". Leaving Florida we turned it on and then read about the history and meaning behind the song as we headed through the largest town by square miles, Jacksonville, FL. The discussion that lead to this desire to learn more about the song came from the general question by all parties involved, Is he singing about the state or a lady. It may be one of those questions they should ask on a personality test that will decide if you should get a dog or not. The song in fact was actually about the state according to the artist, but you could convince me otherwise. As we crossed the border into Georgia I was ready to eat myself sick with peaches. Would you believe I didn't find a damn one of them. Not a single tree even. So I thought I could settle for a peach ipa or peach sour, nope, none of those either. I think the only peach we encountered that day was our hotel room in Savannah. The hotel owner had signs up telling visitors that they are serving limited breakfast and due to the pandemic only 1 of any item is allowed, the pool was closed, and to add insult to injury we got to our room to find it filthy and windows so dirty you couldn't make out anything in the parking lot through them. We told ourselves it was only one night and went to settle in and found a cigarette butt stuffed down inside the AC unit louvers. Id had enough. We put our best Karen impression on and after 30 minutes on the phone we were moved to another Comfort Suites in downtown Savannah that had a full hot breakfast, a clean room, and crystal clear windows. No pool but we were 3/4 compared to the prior 0/4 down the road. We tucked in for a quiet evening and had plans to see Savannah for a couple hours before heading north to Charleston the next day. I think this was the turning point for us and the last Comfort Suite we stayed in the rest of the trip and likely the rest of our lives.
This section of the trip between FL and SC had some great scenery, but the riverfront of Savannah and its old town squares dominated by massive Spanish Oak trees were the real show stoppers up to this point.
The "River Street" area has history going back to the early 1700s and the Street itself dates back to the mid 1800s. The road surface is made of ballast stones that were discarded by inbound ships. The stones themselves came from all over the world as a ship may require more or less depending on the load it was receiving and therefore may have been loaded with stones needed in Spain then had the stone unloaded in Georgia. Because of the abundance of these stones many of the buildings and walls were also made of these same stones as they were many times quartz, granite, and basalt. We walked about a mile of the road enjoying the breeze coming off the river. As we walked we were passed by a container ship in the shipping channel adjacent to the street that towered 100 feet off the top of the water. I'm sure cruise ships are larger, but this was the closest we had ever been to a man made vehicle of this size. To us it was enormous.
After hopping back in the car we set out to see as many of the 22 different squares Savannah had to offer. Think of these like the opposite of a city block. The roads of a standard city block rather than being pavement are 200 year old homes and instead of the center of the block being a building it was a park full of massive old oak trees with the road being between the homes and the park. Many also had statues. All of them had some community event going on such as weddings, birthday parties, church gatherings as we drove by. Each square had its own feeling and many times specific architecture as well. They all had gated green space and they all felt like they were drenched with history. In fact one of the squares known as Chippewa Square is the home of the bench that Tom Hanks sits on to tell his story in the movie Forest Gump. I could only imagine having a week there to walk each of these squares and learn their individual stories....maybe someday.
We found a mural we had been looking for on our way to the massive bridge that spans the river leaving Savannah. We snagged some shots with the nostalgic Welcome to Savannah painting and hurried back to our seats. 10 minutes later we were out again to get a picture with the Welcome to South Carolina sign crossing yet another state off the list. Till next time Georgia. The scenery on this leg from the highway was much like the previous days as you can imagine, but one particular stop will always stand out to me. We were able to go inside and walk around the outside of a place called the "Frampton Plantation House" which was a welcome and interpretive center for the "Lowcountry". The home was built in 1868 on the original grounds after General Sherman's troops burned the original home and outbuildings during the Civil War in1865. Though the new home was built after the civil war ended there were many features still on the property from the days of the war. Out the back door there was a raised berm that would serve as the last line of defense for any Confederate Soldiers holed up on the farm. The front of the berm was steep and the back of the berm was sloped gradually to give the man with the high ground a slight advantage. There was also informational placards showing the pathways the soldiers would have taken when traveling from one destination to another which happened to come right through the property that the plantation occupied.
After a short visit we climbed back into the car and headed E/NE towards Charleston. You will get to read about this visit in the next blog entry.
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