Oh Savannah, Oh Don't You Cry For Me. (Savannah, GA)

Savannah, GA

The road to Savannah, Georgia was filled with green surroundings and farms. There were quite a few peach and other fruit farms along with a couple of nut farms. We ended up stopping at one of the street side markets to sample one of the peaches for which Georgia is so famous for. The roadside market turned into a peach supermarket that came complete with an ice cream stand amongst other things. The market was also connected to the warehouse, which unfortunately was closed and therefore not available for tours. We bought a couple of peaches and continued on our way.

Savannah was a nice little town that had a lot of historic houses and buildings to look at. There were many trees threaded with Spanish moss that covered over the roads. The town was very laid back and had a decent amount of things going on. We drove around for a bit and decided that we would take the highway towards the coast to which there was a fort that you could visit. With our luck, we made it to the fort and it was closed. We turned around and pressed towards the ocean and the much publicized Tybee Island.

Jen didn’t want to put her bathing suit on, but I couldn’t have been more the opposite. I dropped trough behind the wagon and threw my suit on so I could get in that great salty water. I was adamant about getting in the ocean, as this was the first time we had actually made it to the great Atlantic. We made it to the gulf, which was very nice, but it is nothing compared to the Atlantic Ocean. It is like the Pacific only better, because you can actually swim in it and not freeze your balls off, which is nice. We walked over the dunes and there she was in all her greatness.

The water was everything I remembered and then some. The water was a good temperature that was easily around seventy eight degrees or so. That is right around that perfect temperature where it’s refreshing and at the same time very comfortable. The Tybee Island Lighthouse was near the beach we went to and it sported the classic lower south Atlantic lighthouse style of black and white, ala much of the Carolina’s sport so fashionably. The only bummer was that the sun was going down and made for a poor picture of the lighthouse, which really isn’t much of a bummer because it was still a sunset. We sat around on the beach for a bit until our stomachs started to remind us that we need food to survive.

We drove back through the Tybee Island town, which was very interesting setup for a beach town. It was similar to the Jersey Shore at the ocean front houses, but when we were inland, the houses liked to remind us that we were very much in the south, by having very bayou like houses and setups with the draping trees in the surrounding. It was very different from any other beach area I’d been to, which was a nice surprise. Tybee Island was definitely a place that would be fun to spend a couple days on the beach exploring the island, especially since they are supposed to have a great dolphin congregation in the area.

We made back into Savannah with the intention of eating some pizza. The last time we had pizza was in Chicago and we were aching for some. We drove around and found a place that had a pretty sweet special that supplied us with two slices and a drink for three bucks. Now with a deal like this, the pizza has to be fairly crappy, right? Right. Well, it wasn’t necessarily crappy, but just rather bland. But hey, for three bucks you can’t really complain too much.

Following our pizza we drove across the very cool looking bridge that would bring us into South Carolina. Our next big stop was in Charleston, SC which we planned to hit the next day, so we had to find a place to stay. We did a little research and found a couple of campgrounds and settled on a cheap one with showers, because why spend a bunch of money on a campsite that’s going to be hot and probably uncomfortable no matter where or how much it is.

Arriving at the “campground” was quite a quest. The directions given to us by the owner were that when we arrived at a certain gas station it would be on the opposite side of the road and that there would be two lights at the opening for the road. Thinking that we were going to get lost, we prepared and both had our eyes peeled as we entered the town. Surprisingly, it was fairly easy to find. We made it into the “campground” and followed the rest of the directions which consisted of driving down the road until we saw the bathhouse and setting up our tent anywhere in the grass around there. So we meandered our way through the “campground” until we found the bathhouse. You may be asking yourself “What’s the deal with the quotes around the word campground?” To answer your question, they are necessary because the campground was much more of a trailer park than a campground. The trailers that were parked there were definitely not moving anytime soon and it looked as if they hadn’t moved since the 90’s, at least. This mattered little to us, other than the fact that we just felt really weird about pitching a tent in a random patch of grass, but we did just what the guy said and set up.

The one thing that was redeeming about the “campground” was that it had showers, and they were surprisingly kept up very well. It’s amazing how a nice shower can change your attitude the morning after a hot and sticky nights sleep. We showered up and drove across the street to pay our bill. Jen was driving and I tried to convince her to skip on the bill, because it was just so damn weird. We had to go the gas station across the street to pay for the site. I had told her to just drive by and no one would ever know, and she did. However, she turned the wrong way on the highway and we had to drive back the other way. She then pulled into the gas station so that we could pay for the site, because she said she couldn’t drive by it and not pay. Ridiculous.

The gas station was just as crazy as the “campground.” It was part convenience store, part boot and shoe store, part hardware store, part hunting store, and part woodcarving headquarters. They even had a sweet stuffed Lynx, or some variety of small wild cat, that was posed in the position of catching a stuffed bird. It was amazing. We told the lady at the counter that we needed to pay for our campsite and she looked very surprised as if she had never heard of such a thing. After about ten minutes of her doing everything but taking care of us, she came back to the counter and pulled out a huge handwritten receipt book. We paid our bill and left the crazy gas station in a cloud of dust.

Random Facts

Dead Armadillos since Mississippi = 36

Alive Armadillos since Mississippi =1

Horror Movie Campgrounds = 3

Nights Spent Camping in the Tent = 23