Cold Savannah - Feb 18, 2015

I went to graduate school in Atlanta, but unfortunately did little touring around. I’d heard that Savannah was a charming, historic city, but never made it over there. Now, I had a chance to correct that. As things turned out, though, Savannah remains on my “to do” list.

It wasn’t a long drive from Jekyll Island to Savannah, Georgia. After a quick check-in at my RV park, I headed for the visitor’s center, which is where the tour bus departed. Similar to the deal I got in St. Augustine, one fare gave me two days of hop-on hop-off service for the bus. It was chilly in the city, so the bus had plastic curtains over its usually open windows. I snapped a few photos, but the curtains introduced glare and distortion. No matter, I told myself, once the bus has shown me the interesting places to go, I’ll hop off and take good photos. My first hop off was for lunch when we passed a British pub. I had a delicious shepherd’s pie. I walked back to the bus stop and checked the schedule; ten minutes until the next one. I was glad to see that, since the day had not warmed up at all; the temperature was in the low 40’s, and there was a gusty wind, too. I waited; ten minutes came and went, then fifteen; finally after twenty minutes in the cold, the tour bus pulled into view. It stopped, the doors opened, “Sorry,” the driver said, “we’re clear full, you’ll have to wait for the next bus.” What!! The bus pulled away and I suffered another fifteen minutes in the cold until the next one arrived. With that experience, I was unwilling to hop off again until the end of the tour, at which point I decided I’d wait for the next day to see the city in detail.

The next day was even colder with the temperature in the mid-30’s and strong winds. I decided the freedom to tour as I want also includes the freedom not to tour. I spent the day hunkered down in the van at the RV park, catching up on correspondence and blog posts. The following day, I had a reservation at a RV park in Charleston, so I moved on without really seeing Savannah. I’ll return someday and hopefully can plan for better weather.

All this is prologue to saying the photos I have of Savannah are admittedly few and poor quality, but I’ll show some so you can at least get a taste of the city:

This is the home of Juliette Gordon Low,  the woman who founded the Girl Scouts:

The Sorel-Weed House, famous for being haunted:

The photo below was taken near the river. Cotton merchants would walk back and forth on the bridges you see, inspecting and bidding on wagonloads of cotten as they were driven underneath:

So, I saw just enough of Savannah to whet my appetite, and I’ll be back.

Luckily, the weather improved significantly by the time I reached Charleston, the topic of my next post.