At the risk of putting you all to sleep by being repetitive, we are not “city folk.” It’s a noise thing mostly, and noise comes from people, and what is a city if not a huge clump of people? Savannah was a city that I’d always wanted to see, however, so when we decided to keep our plans to travel east, our intact reservations started there.
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| It’s a jungle out there. |
Like many of our friends before us, we stayed at Skidaway Island State Park, which is a beautiful park very close to the downtown area but far enough away to not feel like it. The above photo was taken from our RV window. Any other view would have included other campers, most of them members of some sort of Grand Design RV rally. Our patio area bordered the patio area of another site, but it was too rainy most of the time for us to care about sitting outside. Let’s go to town first, though.
We had only booked four days in the area, and we’d planned our first full day to be the one on which we walked the city’s Historic District (HD.) That turned out to be a good decision since it was the best weather day overall. I had spent a fair amount of time prior to our visit looking at maps of the city and how best to park and access it. There are several parking options in the city from meters with a corresponding app to keep yours fed remotely to public garages. Helpful Hint: If your plan is to walk the famous squares in the HD (and it should be) I recommend parking south of Liberty Street where FREE street parking is plentiful.
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| Approaching Forsyth Fountain. |
We started in Forsyth Park, the largest in the city. It was a busy
place, and it was hard to get a photo without strangers in it, but it
was a verdantly lovely place to begin. Helpful Hint:
There are precious few public restrooms in this area of the city. There
are some in Forsyth, at the very south end of the HD, and and some near
City Hall at the northernmost part of the HD. I’d downloaded a map of
such facilities, but, oddly, it didn’t indicate the ones at Forsyth, so
we made a beeline north. That turned out not only to be a good place for
taking care of business, but they also had a paper map of the squares
I’d been craving. Paper maps rule.
We sat on a bench, me pouring over the map and re-planning the rest of our day to take in all 22 squares and TBG marveling at the size of the barges coming into port. We’d already traversed the five squares known as The Crown Jewels between Forsyth and the river, and we had plans to get a special takeout lunch from a place nearby. We walked the brick and cobblestone streets along the river, visiting a couple riverside parks and two more squares before pausing in Reynolds Square outside our chosen eatery, The Olde Pink House.
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| Reynolds Square |
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| The Olde Pink House |
Fried Green Tomatoes with Applewood Smoked Bacon and Sweet Corn Cream (shared), Shrimp & Grits with Country Ham Gravy, Cheddar Grits Cakes, Collard Greens (for me) and Shrimp Gumbo (for TBG)
I’d also wanted to have a Cheerwine to drink, which is a black cherry soda that has been made since 1917, but they were out. Out! I love me a cherry pop, so I was sad. Instead, we split a too-big bottle of “San Pell” as the kewl kidz call it. Full of good southern food, we set off to complete our square dancing.
No two Savannah squares are the same. Some have statues, others gazebos, here a fountain, there a basketball court, and each seems to have a different style of bench. We didn’t take a photo of all of them or even most of them. It was enough to see them in person, enjoying their beauty, pausing to read an occasional plaque. We puzzled over the fact that the statue of Pulaski was in Monterey Square instead of Pulaski Square, we saw where the Forrest Gump bench scenes had been filmed in Chippewa Square, and we thought the squares in the southern half of the HD were the prettiest overall. Besides touring the squares, the other feature of Savannah I wanted to see was the architecture, and TBG got many photos of it.
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| A gorgeous cayenne-ginger go-cup of heaven. Take that, Cheerwine! |
After all the anticipation of achieving Savannah, you may be wondering if it lived up to our expectations. To that, I’d have to give you a very unsatisfying yes-and-no answer. It is, without a doubt, a resplendent city, but it is a city, and that means it is overrun with cars and view-spoiling modern signage. The photos in the above slideshow were framed to avoid those things, but in person, you don’t get to visually separate them.
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| The collision of charm and necessity. |
As we walked, I wondered aloud if the early city-dwellers sometimes looked around and thought how much prettier it would be without all the consarn carriages around. We may have returned on another day to wander in the Victorian District where there are grander houses to gawk at, but the weather wasn’t on our side, and we spent our remaining days tucked in at Skidaway.
Between rain showers, we slogged our way around sections of the park’s nearly seven miles of trail over the next few days.
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| Sometimes there were helpful boardwalks. |
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| And sometimes…not. |
From the observation tower, we espied a couple new-to-us winged friends.
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| Little Blue Heron |
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| White Ibis (juveniles) |
As we push into Florida for the winter, boardwalks, birds, and bitey things will become our norm. We’ll try to keep our powder dry.
COMMENTS
Did you actually see all 22 squares? That would be impressive. I think we saw a tiny portion of them. That map would certainly come in handy for figuring out a good route to see them all.
These photos are beautiful and perfectly capture the color and feel of that stunning historic district. And I don’t care how they plated it, your lunch looked amaze-balls. Fried green tomatoes, shrimp and grits, gumbo??? Some of my favorite things.
Sorry about all the rain. That is definitely a bummer, but I guess that’s the price we have to pay for all that gorgeous greenery.
We actually did see all 22 squares, plus a couple other parks by the river. I don’t care how much of a tourist I look like with a paper map, I will favor them always over trying to see my tiny phone screen in bright daylight.
Our lunch was really good, though I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t get the whole indoor dining experience because the interior of that place is gorgeous. Even the bathroom was wondrous.
We didn’t mind the rain as much as we minded that it wasn’t diminishing the humidity at all. Rain…99% humidity…rain…99% humidity. It is pretty, though, ya gotta give it that!
And you ate at the Pink House! And you had shrimp and grits and gumbo! Yummy. Which, by the way, are two of our favorite Southern dishes, and we will fix them for you in January at the house on the bay. :-)) Love your two new bird sightings. Isn’t it fun to add new critters to your list in your travels? (Not the bitey kind.)
I do love seeing some new critters now, and I think of you and all our critter-loving friends when I do, thinking to myself how you’ve enjoyed them. There are some you’ve featured in your blogs (purple gallinule, anyone?) that I surely hope to espy this winter!
Enjoy all the new birds you are about to discover 🙂
Ah yes that southern humidity! Quite a bit different than the humidity of the PNW for sure. It’s a way of life in the south.
The birding in Florida is beautiful though. Keep your eyes out for the Roseate Spoonbills always a treat to see. The manatee are fun to see too. Look for them in natural springs area where they are prevalent in the winter.
Safe travels!
Sharron
I am looking forward to some good bird-spotting, and the spoonbills would be fabulous. We’re at a place as I write where we may see some manatee, and that would be such a thrill!
We didn’t mind the rain so much, but it only decreased the humidity by a point or two when it happened, and THAT was a misery at times. Hopefully, that’s mostly behind us now for a few months, and all of us in southern places both west and east can enjoy the cooler, drier time. 🙂