Savannah, Georgia – Big Trip 2019

Wednesday 12 June.  –  It was raining when we got up but we loaded up and left anyways. We were going to go to St. Augustine, Florida and skip Savanna.  BUT, we came upon the Georgia Visitor Center, went in and decided to go to Savannah first.  It seems like a neat place and I’m so glad we changed our minds, it was one of the nicest cities we have been to, and one of my fonder memories.

 

Above is the Visitor Centre we stopped at, which is when we decided to head to Savannah. They had cute displays.

We stayed at the Biltmore RV Park for $48 a night but your trailer has to be self-contained.  Self-contained meaning your trailer has to have it all as the campground has no bathrooms, showers etc.  It’s a very small park right off the highway but only 10 minutes to downtown Savannah.   The owner is really nice and her office also doubles as a small antique/gift store.   We set up and went to the Visitor Center near the downtown core.

We love our trolley tours; it’s a great way to get acquainted with a city or town.  It was $27 each for the Old Savanna Trolley Tours, which, if you buy a ticket after 2 o’clock, then the rest of today and tomorrow is included. So that’s what we did.   The trolley goes to 16 different stops and then back to the Visitor Centre.  We took the trolley to all 16 stops, just to get an idea of the city.  At some of the stops, a costumed character would get on for a few minutes and talk. We had Mrs. Beasley, (who was the first black nun), Forrest Gump, Mr. Greene, Robert Louis Stevenson and more.  We were told that Robert Louis Stevenson got his inspiration for this novels, particularly Treasure Island, from this area.

We stayed on the trolley for the whole ride the first time around.  This is a beautful city, they used to have 24 city squares but now they have 22.   Two were lost due to city development.  Years ago, when they built the squares, I believe they said there were 40 houses around each square.  The squares are all lovely, like little mini parks in the middle of the city.   Our trolley driver talked the whole time pointing out attractions and history.

We got back to the Visitor Center and decided to drive downtown to get a place to park as we wanted to go to the Moon River Brewing Company.  It’s a huge building and really nice inside, very rustic. We sat at a table and I ordered a chicken sandwich and sweet potato fries. Sandwich was not so great and the fries not so great. Clint had a stew type dish which was really good. We had a taster tray of eight different beers. The beer was okay, I liked the Swamp Fox IPA and Clint liked the Stout.  All in all not bad, we did like the ambience of the place.  After we ate, we were going to walk around downtown a bit more but it was pouring rain.

Thursday 13 June –  we got up early and went to the Visitor Center to catch the trolley. We ended up downtown and walked the different City Squares and went into the famous church, St. John the Baptist church.  This is a very walkeable city once you get downtown, you can do museums, the City Squares, restaurants and the Riverfront.

We walked down to the Riverfront and it’s very beautiful and quite a lot to it. We got tickets for a 1 o’clock boat cruise.  We were going on the Georgia Queen, one of the boats in the Savannah Riverboat Cruises.  We had to wait a little while so we sat in a small Greek restaurant and had a smoothie. Time to get on the boat !  The boat ride was pretty boring.  We went down the river a ways, at one point, they docked and we were able to get off the boat and walked around Old Fort Jackson.  

 

We off the boat at 230 and walked down to an Irish bar and had beer and soup with salad.  We saw the famous “Waving Girl” statue on the riverfront.  The Riverfront is so unique, I love the old buildings and the cobblestone walks and roadways.   Then we just walked around a lot downtown to look at the sights and then back to Visitor Center on the trolley.

The tour guide told us about a brewery called Service Brewery so we went there. It was not too far from the Visitor Center and we were able to get a free parking spot right across the street.  We sat at the bar and had a flight.  I talked to a couple guys there, one was a server named Brian.  I told him about my son Jay’s podcast and he and another guy seemed very interested. Clint played cornhole outside with a lady that we had been talking to.   I just wanted to sit at the bar. Savanna is a beautiful city and so far we are having a great time.

Friday 14 June  – sunny. We stopped at the Pirate House downtown Savannah and went through to look at the bar and to see the gift shop and restaurant. I bought Matey there, (a little stuffie) !

We left there and drove to the Savanna Wildlife Refuge and we were there for four hours.  This place is right up my alley!  Lots of trees, birds, animals and little to no people.   It was only a 4 mile driving loop but you could stop and/or get out whenever we wanted. We drove around this loop a few times.  Every time we would see something different.   We saw alligators, Moorhen ducks, with their babies, and they were so tiny. They were really cute little guys. We saw green herons, herons, egrets and other birds. Interesting place, used to be a rice plantation. They drain the water and then fill up regularly in this one canal area.

Below is the Common Gallinule and her babies.   They swim like ducks and can easily walk atop floating vegetation.  This species used to be called the Common Moorhen.  I had never seen these guys before and they were really cute and fun to watch.

On to Fort Pulaski. Right across from the Tybee Island. We got in free because we had our Parks Pass!    We are getting our money’s worth out of this pass.  We did an hour-long walking tour with a Park Ranger and there was lots of  interesting information. The Park Rangers really know their stuff.

Then we went off to Tybee Island and parked the truck so we could walk around. We walked the big pier, there are lots of people fishing and more people on the beach. It was going on 5 o’clock so we didn’t bother doing our beach day even though I brought Bean chair. We stopped at a little dive bar and sat at the bar and had a really cold Bud beer in frosty glasses.  It was so good, we decided to have another.  Lots of locals come in here and the bartender was really nice lady.

Headed back to Savanna to go to Vinnie Van GoGo’s for this famous pizza we heard about. We waited about 50 minutes before we got a table. What struck us as strange as there were all kinds of empty tables but they would leave them empty for 20 to 25 minutes before they would seat people. I don’t understand that. There were two tables for two by the wall, in the outside patio, where we wanted to sit. They were empty for about 25 minutes. Finally……… she gave us one of those tables. The worst part was, the pizza was not worth the wait. Very salty and the crust was tough.

When we finished, we walked through the city market area, two blocks were blocked off to cars. We stood and watched a band called Individually Twisted and they were really good. Three young guys doing rock songs.  Lots of people come down here in the evenings, it was a lot of fun.

We ended up in a candy store so Clint could get some ice cream. Then we saw cops on horses so I got to pet the horses and talk to the cops for a bit.  I got photo bombed by a lady, but all in good fun.  And nope, we weren’t drinking!

Saturday 15 June –  sunny 25 to 30 Celsius. When we got up today, we decided to stay one more night but our site was booked so the lady said we could park in the grass, close to the road, for free.  Yes please!  No Hydro (electricity) or water but that was okay.  We got moved over to that spot and then went back downtown at about 1030 and parked near the Riverfront. We walked over to Owens Thompson houseand the slave quarters. It was $20 each but that included the other two Telfair Museum buildings. We did a tour at noon of the quarters and the house tour was 45 minutes. Quite interesting learning all the history of this city.  Well worth the time to tour this group of buildings.

Clint had to go back to put money in the meter so I said I’d meet him at Teyfair square where the second museum was. It was a huge building, five stories and it was an art gallery. We walked the whole art gallery and then walked over to Moon River Brewery for  lunch; we shared a salad and broccoli soup. We were talking about the Wildlife Refuge and thought we would drive back there, so we did and we drove around twice more to get photos of birds and wildlife.

Well, tomorrow we are off to St Augustine, Florida !