We drove into the state of Georgia on Sunday 15th March. Our only real destination was to be Savannah. We had looked around for campsites close enough for us to get in to visit the city and kept being told they were full “because of the holiday”. We couldn’t work out what holiday this could be and were completely gob smacked to be told it was because of St Patrick’s Day. Really??? In Savannah?? Turns out they have the largest St Patrick’s Day Parade and Celebration in the US aside from in New York City. This we HAD to see!!
We were heading north on I95 surrounded by trucks with trailers and motorbikes all heading home from Bike Week so came off the highway and followed route 17 instead. We went past huge fields of brand new cars – literally 1000’s and 1000’s of them then drove over the bridge into Brunswick and spotted the ro-ro’s, which had obviously brought them into the huge port here. Aside from that it suddenly felt so much more rural than where we had come from and despite leaving Florida the sun was still shining so we were happy.
We sadly had to drive without really stopping through this ‘Historic Corridor’ and totally miss out the Golden Isles which we would have loved to see; including Jekyll Island where Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and a few other uber wealthy had set up the Jekyll Island Club at the turn of the 20th Century – a shame as I’m sure we would have fitted right in!! But we had to be in Charlotte by the following Saturday for me to catch a flight back to the UK for a few days, so we were on a schedule.
We drove up through the small town of Darien, which was the first British outpost in Georgia. Then in the early 19th Century was the centre of the lucrative rice trade; the area is surrounded in plantations where supposedly the abuse of slaves was prevalent. The coastline is mainly road less unconnected islands – lots of coastline protected by wildlife refuges and state parks which we would love to have explored. Not easy to access and sadly we were lacking in time. Every 5 miles I pointed out something interesting we were missing – back to the same old ‘can’t see everything’ mantra!!
We did stop very briefly in the town of Midway and get a few snaps of their 200-year-old church, which still has the original pulpit and slave gallery. That and a fantastically evocative graveyard with trees dripping in Spanish moss. A few miles down the road we passed another church which is supposedly the country’s’ smallest – with only 12 seats. Our favourite was the church with a sign saying “Under same management for 2000 years” outside. Very good!!
We got to our campsite, which was lovely and set on a lake complete with swans. We were told that this was one of only a few places in the US to have swans, which I found very hard to believe, but the man at the campsite was adamant!! William immediately started fishing and was out there for the whole evening. It’s so lovey to see him sitting patiently, quite happy to spend hours catching nothing. This from the boy who can’t sit still for more than 10 minutes normally.
On Monday we did the Trolley Tour of Savannah to see the ‘main bits’ before the madness we’d been told would hit the city the following day when ½ million people were due to arrive. Well it seemed that St Patrick’s Day fever had already hit – even the fountains ran green!!
Almost everyone we saw was wearing green! Barriers and road closures were already in place. It felt very much like the calm before the storm. Despite that the sun was shining and it is really a very beautiful city and we loved it. The city is based on a grid pattern and has countless garden squares, full of oak trees dripping in moss. The most famous of which is Chippewa Square where Forest Gump sat and waited for his bus. The bench became so famous after the film came out and caused so much congestion around the square they removed it and it now lives in the visitor Centre.
Just as I imagined it would be with lots of lovely garden squares and beautiful buildings. The River Walk would I’m sure be lovely on a normal day but was covered in pop up bars, restaurants and stalls selling green shamrock stuff!! Savannah College of Arts and Design – SCAD – plays an important part in the city. The Arts college which has 9000 students (compared with just 70 in 1979) has done up 77 buildings in town, restored old buildings and is responsible for some beautiful conversions. Most exciting of all is that there is a shop that sells SCAD student design products. I could have spent a fortune on jewellery, rugs, scarves, paintings and more but settled on a new journal.
We came back into town on Tuesday for the big St Patrick’s Day Parade and celebrations. We’d been warned that parking and driving into town would be a complete nightmare. So on the advise of the car park marshal at the visitor Centre we got up at 6am and drove into town to be ‘first in line’ for the ‘first come first served’ parking. Wholly unnecessary. We got there and were the only people ‘in line’. Parked up and promptly shut all the blinds and went back to sleep again for a couple of hours. Woke up expecting the car park to be full to bursting, which would make our very early start seem worthwhile. Sadly not. The car park was still half empty when we stepped out in our Green attire and headed off to see the parade!!
The sun was shining and every square we walked past had been completely taken over by groups of people who had set up pop up marquees and had BBQ’s going. Every street was lined with chairs and people set up for the day. Everyone was in a party mood and as one t shirt I spotted said “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start at breakfast!”
The parade was LONG!!! Think it lasted 3 hours. As well as some fantastic floats and performing bands there were sections of the parade, which seemed to basically be random people who claimed to be of Irish descent. There were a few freckled white legs but the rest of the tanned white teethed leggie blondes were of questionable Irish descent. A lot of very strange participants. The Hispanic Society had a salsa-dancing leprechaun, which was odd. Company advertising Pay Day Loans had a float?!?
It was all very interactive. No marshals. No ropes or barriers. So the crowd and participants of the parade all mingled together. The family next to us had an enormous bag of bead necklaces and they spent the whole time running in and hanging them round the necks of people in the parade they liked the look of – they must have had 1000’s of them. A little girl in an Irish dance troupe obviously liked the look of Charlie and ran out and kissed him much to his horror! I was a lot happier than that when a young college rugby player ran over and kissed me!!
It was a fantastic day. A very relaxed, sociable and fun celebration. We contemplated leaving the RV in the car park and spending the rest of the day down at the riverside. But decided it was probably all about to get very messy so took our leave. We drove north of the city to a new campsite in Hardeeville, which meant we were now in South Carolina. We ended our St Patrick’s Day celebrations with a few drinks on the dock as the boys fished – much more our style these days!!
We got one more day of sunshine and then it started raining. This was the first time we had seen rain since the big fishing trip back in Florida. Our next stop was Charleston and the only remotely interesting thing that happened on the way was when John didn’t put the hand brake on properly at a petrol station. He suddenly realised the tarmac outside the door was moving at an alarming speed and we were rolling forwards towards some parked cars. Luckily his lightning reactions meant he managed to stop it in time. Whoops!
We were in a lovely campsite that Charlie and Susan had recommended to us way back when we were in the Florida Keys. Then John & Kim (our rocket launch friends) had stayed here the week before us and mentioned too. So we had high hopes for it. It was a State Park and had a fishing lake and canoes and seemed like a great place for John and the boys to spend the first few days of their ‘Boys Time’ while I went back to England.
We all spent Friday visiting the city of Charleston, another one of those places for which I had high expectations. It didn’t disappoint. The capital of South Carolina is a beautiful city with a lovely atmosphere. We made full use of the free trolley service and toured as much of the city as we could. An interesting idea to make these free – handy for tourists but also provides a dry warm place for some questionable characters to basically ride them all day long.
The highlights of the city for us (in our very brief visit) were the rainbow road, colourful houses along East Bay St. The city market full of artisan stalls where we tried hard not to spend any money. Particularly liked these reversible dolls – white doll at the top then flip over her skirt and there is a black doll underneath. Slave kids would use these to hide their ‘white dolls’ from the plantation foremen. We dreamt about which of the huge houses at the waterfront Battery we would like to live in, including the Calhoun mansion, the city’s most expensive house.
We spent a bit of time too at the site of the Four Corners of the Law. The four impressive buildings that sit at this crossroad are a church (gods law), post office (federal law), city hall (municipal law) and courthouse (judicial law) – Hail, Mail, Jail and Bail. We visited all four buildings, which are completely open to the public and have fabulous docents happy to tell you about each one. Our favourite was the policewoman in the City Hall who spent ages with us setting up photo opportunities and getting us to repeat random sentences so she could listen to our ‘fabulous accent’.
The courthouse was designed by architect James Hoban and provided the inspiration for the design of the White House. City Hall was once a bank back in 1801 and had these enormous safes. They were apparently short in those days so the whole place has incredibly low ceilings. St Michael’s church was beautiful and had private boxes downstairs each with an individual key for access for the rich while the public gallery upstairs was for everyone else! City Hall was built by the British in 1771 and had also been used as a dungeon and an Exchange building. They entertained George Washington here, and copies of the constitution were signed here (as well as in 3 other buildings in Indianapolis, Rhode Island and Philadelphia).
A delicious crab lunch in the sunshine and that was pretty much all we had time for. Saturday John and the kids drove me to the airport. On our way out of the campsite I spotted this strange rocking bench. Called a Joggle board. It came originally from Scotland. Couples while they were courting would sit one either end of it and as they ‘rocked’ they would be shuffled closer and closer till they ended up next to each other – sweet eh?
I flew back to England on Saturday 21st March leaving the ‘boys’ in Charleston for a few more days. They were then booked to spend a few days in Myrtle Beach then on to another lovely looking State Park in South Carolina before going to Charlotte (North Carolina) to meet me upon my return. So I will stop here and hand over to Charlie to tell the rest of what happened in South Carolina. Watch this space….
Wickenswanderings 