Savannah Georgia

May 26 – June 3, 2016

A little bit farther north we go to Savannah Georgia.  This was another very short travel day of about 88 miles to the Biltmore RV Park in Savannah.  This trip was just about as easy as a trip can get and the weather helped too being beautiful and hot at around 95!

On the way into Savannah we passed this and I thought it was interesting.  It is a sign for a farmers market.

The Biltmore RV Park has pretty bad reviews on-line so we were just a bit worried about the place.  The reviews basically trashed the 2 women owners of the place.  The owners are a mother-daughter team.  The daughter is probably about our age around 60 with the mother then somewhere around 80.

Nothing makes you feel more at home that razor wire!

The reviews, in summary, said that the two women were rude and just not nice people. We were willing to judge for ourselves as the rates for Biltmore were far lower than the surrounding competing campgrounds.  And, to top it off, the Biltmore is only 8 miles to the old downtown area or about 15 minutes!

The bottom line here is that we didn’t heed the reviews.  The Biltmore is a great place and as far we can tell doesn’t deserve the bad reviews.  The only thing that would make it better for us would have been WIFI.  The women treated us very well and were very helpful in telling us all about the Savannah area.  I could detect a sense that they are conservative and are apprehensive about who is staying in their park.  Not sure why they are that way but as long as you treat them with respect all is cool with them.

After we got the half an hour scoop on the area, “mom” walked us to our site telling us to come back to the office after we were set up to pay.  OK, mom isn’t very good at showing RVers their sites.  Our site was the second back-in from the border fence of the RV Park.  When mom finally got to the site we were sort of “fenced” in when it comes to backing into the site.  Basically, I needed to turn around and back-in from the other direction.  They gave us a nice site because they told us that they weren’t going to put anybody on the fence side of our site.  So we basically had 2 sites all to ourselves!  We think that they liked us too!

Our large double site!

We are going to be here for a week so we were not in any real hurry to get out and sightsee.  We had a horse carriage tour of the old part of Savannah for 2:30 the next day, Friday. I bought the tour through the internet site Living Social about a month ago but made the reservation after we arrived.  We thought that having a tour would show us the lay of the land so we could figure out what we wanted to see and do later in the week.

We made our way into town on Friday afternoon looking for a parking place which seems to be pretty hard to find.  After we spent $20 on a parking space we learned later that the city has parking areas around the city for much less.  In fact, the next time we were in the city we only spent $8 for 4 hours. To be fair, the $20 place was for the entire day or until midnight, but you had to purchase the entire day.  The city parking lots allowed you purchase by the hour at $2 each hour.   Little information makes things so much easier sometimes!

The horse and buggy ride through the city was very nice and we learned a lot.  The nice thing about this sort of tour is that it is very intimate; you get more personal information from the guide.  The buggy held probably 3 couples but we were the only ones on this tour.  Not only did we learn a little about the city we learned some about the people as well.

Our buggy tour guide liked to talk about himself a lot but he managed to get in some sights too! 

There are many of these little parks through out the town.

It's the Tomochichi rock!  Seems the politicians of the day covered up one of the Indian graves  who helped settle the area.  So the tribe sent this rock later to commemorate the man.  The rock is from Stone Mountain Georgia.

It was about 4 when the buggy tour ended and we had until midnight where the truck was parked so we walked River Street.   River Street was just run down old cotton storage houses and the like until just few years ago.  The city decided to turn the area into a tourist entertainment area.  So the old buildings now house restaurants, bars and shops.  They really did a nice job with this area.  It has a safe clean feel with the old seafaring view.  Very nicely done!

To get from the populated part of Savannah the use of these stairs is needed.  Travel these at your own risk!  Uneven and they have varying tread heights.

Our planning and refreshment stop.

Local brew, it was good!

Large container ship passing on the Savannah River.

Patty shopping!

Back side of River Street.

We walked the tourist area up and down River Street.  We stopped at one point and had a light snack and a beer. While having the refreshments we decided to go on a dinner cruise on the Savannah River. Since we had paid for the day parking we might as well get our money's worth, right?

The dinner cruise turned out nice and the food was some of the best we have had on these city cruises.  The cruise took us inland for a few miles and then back past our starting point toward the ocean for a few miles.  We had some great views as well as pictures of the sun setting over South Carolina. We also saw many huge container ships coming and going on the river.  This river is definably still a major seaport!  We were told that one of the container ships that passed us was over 11 hundred feet long!  That is a huge ship!

Our dinner cruise boat.

On board.

The famous Talmadge Bridge over the Savannah River.

Sunset over South Carolina

Our dinner cruise boat after we got off for the night.

Saturday we decided to take a traditional hop on hop off trolley tour of the city.  We learned some time ago that taking tours are so much better than just wandering around without knowing what you are looking at.  

Some sights from the hop on hop off tour.  Servants stayed on the bottom floor
so the main entry was on the second floor.

Cool rain gutter drain spouts!

This was the first Ford car dealer in Savannah.

Farmers market in Savannah

Plant your own mushrooms from a bag!

Very nice gesture!

Oldest house in savannah.

Statue of a woman who for most of her life waved at all of the ships
who came into and left Savannah.

After the tour we went to a musical at one of the old theaters in town.  The musical was one of those that were made for us tourists.  It was presented and produced with local talent and had bits and pieces of the music from the area.  The show was good but wasn’t our sort of thing.  Like anything else, it was a minute in time and something we will remember so it was worth it in the end.

Sunday we decided to hit the local beach that Savannah locals use.  The local beach is called Tybee Island. Tybee Island is located about 15 miles to the east of Savannah.  It really doesn’t seem like an island in the sense that we are accustomed to.  The so called islands here are separated from the coastline by marsh lands.  When you look at a map Tybee Island doesn’t look like an island because it is not surrounded by water. Tybee has the Atlantic Ocean on one side and 4-5 miles of marsh on the other side.

Looking north up the beach on Tybee Island

Pier into the Atlantic Ocean on Tybee Island

On the pier loads of people fish.  You can rent the gear right there on the pier.

Patty shopping on Tybee Island

Out for dinner on Tybee Island

The height of hurricane surges on Tybee Island.

Tybee Island is like most beach recreation areas with the many beach surf shops, restaurants, and bars.  The sand here is hard packed like Daytona in Florida so walking out to the water is pretty easy.  Also there really isn’t a sharp drop at the edge of the water so the tide comes and goes over a large area.  It also makes it very easy to get into the water for kids.  We hung out for a couple hours just watching people and the water.  We then had some lunch and headed back to our RV for the day.

Monday we had some rain so we just hung out at the RV. We finished the last blog post and went to the nearby Walmart parking lot so we could upload it.  We don’t have WIFI at our site so we are careful using our data.  So uploading a large file like our picture laden posts just wasn’t happening on our data plan.  We get a spot close to the building and sign on the Walmart WIFI.  This Walmart even has WIFI antennas on the outside of the building.  Maybe they all have outside antennas I just haven’t noticed, now I’m going to look and see if they do.

We really did like Tybee beach so we went back again on Tuesday for a few hours. 

Wednesday we played golf at a local course.  Golf is really pretty cheap here in the southeast.  We spent just $28 dollars for the 2 of us with a cart!  This course was a pretty standard length of around 6600 yards but a lot of the holes were pretty far apart making it not good for walking the course.  I managed to shoot my usual of a 105; not bad for a first time on a course I thought.  Weird though, I shoot the same if I have played a course for a while or for the first time, what is up with that?

Henderson Public Golf course.

Patty teeing off

Weird mushroom we found on the course.

Thursday we headed for Myrtle Beach and the Myrtle Beach State Park for a few days.  We are going to visit with a few friends there before heading back to Jacksonville Florida.

Stay Tuned!