Day 40 - St. Augustine, Florida to Savannah, Georgia

The adventures have been coming hot and heavy lately and I'm having trouble keeping up with the writing. Today we spent the entire day in Savannah, Georgia, which was great fun. I'd love to write about it, but I haven't written about yesterday yet. So, before I launch into Savannah, what follows is the short version of yesterday's adventures.

As you might guess, we very much wanted to stay in St. Augustine. It's a truly wonderful city for those of us who appreciate history and love to just savor every roof tile and quoin, every green leafy garden and crooked door on every block. But as we've said before, if we stayed an extra day or two in every city that we found fascinating, we'd not be home before Linus staked out the pumpkin patch waiting for the appearance of that fabled giant Halloween vegetable.

So yesterday morning we loaded up the RV and headed north out of St. Augustine with the avowed purpose of ending up in Savannah, Georgia, some 180 miles away. Now I know most people wanting to make that drive would find their way as quickly as possible to Interstate 95 and in a little over two hours would be enjoying a cocktail in some seaside restaurant as they gaze out at the sea birds cavorting overhead. Not us. Rather than jumping right onto I95 and zooming northward, we ambled over to Highway 1, a more scenic route, and proceeded to roll along the coast at a very sedate pace.

At some point we consulted the map and determined that Highway 17 north might serve as our scenic byway for the day. Good choice indeed. The little rural route, once referred to as the Dixie Highway, proved to be just what the doctor ordered for folks who don't enjoy the hustle and bustle of the interstates. The little two-lane road was lined on both sides with tall trees, abandoned and quietly moldering roadside businesses, and the occasional lonely farm or outbuilding. I liked the route because it tended to just meander its way northward rather than bully its way in any single direction. Sometimes we seemed to be headed north, but oftentimes we might just as easily be heading either east or west. If you're in a hurry you might want to avoid Highway 17 out of St. Augustine. But if you're intent on enjoying life in the slow lane, 17 will be your friend.

Normally the very best thing about traveling the rural routes is what you discover by accident between the rare tiny towns, or off on some side road only hinted at by a decades-old roadside sign. Yesterday did not disappoint. As we skipped over the bayous, backwaters, and islands on our way north along the coast, we suddenly came upon a village where something way out of the ordinary was taking place. In order to enter the town we had to drive over two or three hundred feet of bridge. But where you might expect to be greeted by "No Fishing from Bridge" signs, in this case there were hundreds of people lining the east side of the span, all intent on something down below in the estuary. This called for investigation

As we entered town, we discovered the tiny hamlet looked like the fourth of July had come a couple of months early. Aside from the hundreds of people on the bridge, there were hundreds and hundreds more along the banks of the estuary. Just north of the river bank we encountered a carnival in full swing. There were so many cars parked along main street, and in every nook and imaginable cranny, that we ended up parking the RV on the front lawn of a Baptist church some distance down a side street (photo top right). We didn't figure that the church was going to be much of a draw with the carnival in town, so our parking spot would probably not irritate any parishioners.

After loading up with the usual cameras, water, and the like, we set out for the river to see just what in the heck was going on. It didn't take long to find out. The town was celebrating the 46th annual blessing of the shrimp fishing fleet. Say what? Forest Gump not withstanding, we'd never heard of the practice. But what the heck, we decided that a party is a party and we threw ourselves right into the celebration.

The first thing we did was make our way out to the middle of the town bridge and position ourselves for some good shots of the fishing fleet. Let's face it, it's pretty hard not to take good photos of snow white boats on blue water backed by a brilliant blue sky. So, fire away I did. Along the way we ran into a half dozen Knights of Columbus (photo left) who kindly turned away from the ceremony and granted us permission to film them.

The "blessing" ceremony involved each individual boat in turn steaming out into mid channel, approaching the bridge amid clapping and cheering, and the appropriate clergy reciting a prayer over the P.A. system that I think God would have no trouble hearing. After the blessing, the boats all did a 180 degree turn amid more clapping and cheering, and then chugged back to their mooring as the next boat approached. I was getting chills just watching, and I know nothing about the dangers of shrimping -- well, at least nothing beyond what Forest taught me.

Once we had snapped a couple of dozen shots of the boats, we headed for the carnival. Though neither one of us are much up for carnivals, Yours Truly wanted a genuine, 46th anniversary, blessing of the shrimping fleet, t-shirt. Well, we hadn't gone more than fifty feet inside the carnival grounds and we came upon the t-shirt booth. That was easy, I thought. But just to be neighborly, we went ahead and strolled the length and breadth of the carnival grounds. A few minutes later we stopped at a booth selling genuine cane sugar syrup suitable for waffles, pancakes, and the most scrumptious biscuits you'll ever put in your mouth. At least that's what the little old lady standing next to me said as I studied the bottle.

"No corn syrup in this beauty," the salesman added.

"It's dandy stuff," the little old lady said.

"I'll take it," I said, and snapped a photo of her just to prove I hadn't been imaging the whole exchange (photo right).

So there you have it. That event in the tiny town of Darien, Georgia, made our whole day. I just wish we could have spent another hour or more, maybe learned more about the day that General Sherman came to town during the Civil War and left not a building standing. But the road was calling and soon we were back on Route 17, enjoying the grandeur of the countryside, and scouting for the next eye-opening experience.

I'm NOT going to relate how our GPS decided to screw with us when we got close to Savannah, how it asked us to leave Route 17 and get on the interstate in the wrong direction, and then, when we had corrected the direction problem, put us back on Route 17 as if it never needed to make us leave in the first place. Our campsite turned out to be just a half mile off of Route 17 and the GPS must have been having a bad day or something.

When we got into camp, we parked our rig right between two fancy, but older, Class A motor homes (photo left) where the septuagenarian inhabitants of same could be seen sitting in the shared space between their two coaches having cocktails. I felt a little bad about backing into their living room, but as it turned out, both were one-time fellow Californians, and they greeted us warmly. Deciding not to be shy, we immediately insinuated ourselves into their cocktail party and even brought the ice.

And that was our day. Lots of fun, adventure, camaraderie, and education.