Day 41 - We explore Savannah, Georgia

Savannah is yet another city that Concetta and I have been wanting to see forever. Every time its magnolia and live oak-shaded streets, lined by quaint 18th and 19th century buildings, appear on TV, we just want to get in the car and go there immediately. Well, yesterday our fondest desire finally came true.

We got lucky with the RV park we chose. One call to a Savannah tour company, and one of their trolleys drove out to the park and picked us up. No charge. Of course, since we bought a tour package from them when we got to town, the company more than made back their expenses. Still, in these large historic cities like Savannah, it's often best to line up one of these hop on/hop off arrangements where you can visit a variety of your favorite attractions, then hop aboard the trolley for a ride to the next place you want to explore.

And Savannah is a wonderful place to explore, whether you go on foot, or whether you just ride around on the trolley all day. James Oglethorpe was the genius who plaited Savannah and dreamed up the system of central squares surrounded by multi-story houses. Originally there were twenty-five squares. After some ill-advised "urban renewal" the city lost three, but there's still twenty-two left and boy are they picturesque. Each square is basically a fabulous park, and most of these charming tree-shaded glens have some commemorative statue illustrating the city's history as the central theme (photo below left).

Naturally, since we only planned on spending one day in Savannah, we missed many, many things. We purchased tickets that allowed us to take several house tours, including the homes of Juliette Gordon Low who was famously involved with the creation of the Girl Scouts. Though Low did not dream up the concept of the Girl Scouts, she assumed leadership soon after the groups' creation and was thereafter the prime mover for the scouts until her death in 1927 at the age of 66 from breast cancer.

There were fourteen stops on the hop on/hop off trolley tour. Once we hopped off, we did our best to follow the maps provided by the tour company and show up at the proper addresses for our tours. This, unfortunately, left little time for just hanging out and taking photographs. Combined with the overcast skies most of the day and the unwillingness of docents in the historic properties to allow photographs meant that I don't have much to show you. Still, if you're a fan of historic architecture, Savannah is the place to come and hang out for a week or two. Virtually every building is photogenic and even the tourists are worth shooting.

By 1:00 p.m. Concetta and I had "worked" through lunch and still had a tour of the nautical museum to accomplish. But we remembered that our trolley tour guide had mentioned in passing that Leopold's Ice Cream Parlor had the best ice cream in the world. Since according to the map we were only a couple of blocks away, we set out to see if we could solve both our lack of noonday meal and test the tour guide's faith in Leo's ice cream.

Well, when we got to the ice cream parlor we discovered that a whole lot of people had taken the tour guide seriously and were now lined up down the sidewalk in front of our destination lunch stop. Undaunted, we got in line and discussed just what we were going to order. At one point, a fellow line-stander grabbed a couple of menus and we all perused our choices together.

At first we thought we might get a BLT and maybe grab an ice cream cone on our way out, if that were possible. But as we got closer to our turn to order we noticed that just getting a table might be a tall order in itself. At the last moment we decided to just get a couple of waffle cones, stuffed with our favorite flavor, and eat our "lunch" as we walked back to the trolley stop to catch a ride to the nautical museum, stop 14 on the itinerary.

And that's almost what we did. We did order ice cream -- I got tutti frutti and Concetta got lemon -- but as we finished paying and turned to go we noticed that a table had just opened up not six feet from us. So in the end we got to eat our ice cream lunch in comfort as we watched in total wonderment the queue of happy ice cream seekers, never less than two dozen, trail through the door and out onto the sidewalk.

Sad to say that when we finally did get to our last tour of the day we discovered that the nautical museum was closed on Mondays and we had to miss what I had anticipated would be the highpoint of the day, at least for me. There was nothing to do at that point but ride back to the depot as our shuttle to the RV camp was scheduled to pick us up in less than an hour.

But back at the depot I discovered that for a mere $10.00 I could walk around the rail museum that happened to be right next door to the tour trolley drop off point. To my surprise, the sun actually came out at that point and made my life a little easier, though the rail museum proved to be of far less quality than the one we have in Carson City. Still, railroads are always interesting, no matter where you find them, and I got to tour two 1940s era sleeper cars, wander unsupervised through the machine shop area, and hitch a ride on a moving turntable by the end of my 45 minute visit. Pretty cool!

When I had run completely out of time and Concetta was wondering if I had finally become lost for good, I made it back to the shuttle

pick-up point in time to catch the shuttle back to the RV park. Our day had felt pretty rushed, and I suppose we should have just stayed another day to continue the fun. But when we got up this morning, still waffling over our decision, it started to rain lightly and got steadily harder. Since neither of us wanted to do any sightseeing in the rain, we instead packed up and headed for the open road. I think we'll always wish that we had spent more time in Savannah, one of the most beautiful cities in the country, but maybe we'll make it back someday. I'd love to stay a week and just walk the city streets. Maybe the sun will even accommodate me and hang around a bit, too.

There was only one sort of irritating problem with Savannah and I spent most of today being reminded of it. They have some sort of bug that bites and you don't even see them. I woke up today itching in a dozen different locations. Good thing I thought to pack "AfterBite," which is a roll-on anti-itch ointment in a tube. Very handy stuff. Don't leave home without it if you're venturing south of the Mason Dixon line.