San Antonio Adventures

I'm sure my readers are tired of the endless monotony of the previous couple posts; however, I felt them necessary if I'm to maintain any vestige of continuity. On a more selfish note, I don't wanna look back later and see I've missed a chunk of time. This thing is for me too, you know, and as I do all the work, I can post anything my black and ill-intentioned heart desires...

FACT OF INTEREREST: Spanish missions were not churches. They were Indian towns with the church as the focus where, in the 1700s, the native people were learning to become Spanish citizens. In order to become a citizen, you had to be Catholic; that's why the King of Spain sent missionaries to acculturate (?) them.

Known as 'Queen of the Missions', San Jose is the largest of the series and was almost fully restored to its original design in the 1930s by the WPA (Works Projects Administration, a Depression-era money pit designed to mitigate Hoovervilles and suppress food riots). Mission San José is cool 'cause it shows the visitor how all the missions might have looked over 250 years ago. So, I chose this one to show you.

Mission San Jose; Allison's Dad Marion, Brother Josh, Fiancee Kellie


Cathedral Tower At Mission San Jose:


Wider View Of The Main Compound:


While in San Antonio, we stayed at a historic hotel, now called the Sheraton Gunter. AMAZING PLACE. We stayed on what they call the 'Club Floor'; it's got a facility, accessible only to that floor, that's essentially a 24-hour hospitality suite. It has food, beverages, a 60-inch plasma TV, and business services. I've not seen anything like it, but I LIKE IT.

The roots of the Sheraton Gunter Hotel date back to the first year of the Republic of Texas, and it holds a prominent place in the state’s history.

In 1837, just a year after the fall of the Alamo, the Frontier Inn lit its kerosene lamps and opened its doors on the corner of what was then El Rincon and El Paseo streets. It enjoyed the best location in the center of town, and quickly became a favorite among the waves of new settlers swarming in from the East.

The Frontier changed hands twice before becoming The Gunter Hotel at the turn of the century, when this intersection had become a vital part of San Antonio’s business center. It was then that Jot Gunter and a group of investors had decided that the state’s most progressive city needed a palatial new hotel. So they purchased the property and added six new stories in steel, concrete and buff brick, making it the largest building in San Antonio (at the time). The official opening was November 20, 1909.

The Sheraton Gunter San Antonio:


Our Room At The Sheraton Gunter:


Club Suite At The Gunter:


Sick of doing this for today. This post to be extended tomorrow.

Scotty

OK, I'm back, and again the term 'tomorrow' seems to have little or no specific link to my life. We have had several days of WAY above-normal daytime highs here on the Yellowstone, and I have been busy trying to make a photographic record of the convulsions the river is undergoing as a result of SERIOUS snowmelt about 60 miles west. More about that later, but while taking pictures this morning we witnessed a giant chunk of the east bluff fall thunderously about 500 feet into the river, creating a mini-tsunami. Sounded like a jet taking off, and it scared the hell outta Allison. Not unlike, by the way, what you see in nature programs about the Greenland ice cap, looked and sounded the same...

Last note about San Antonio, then we'll move on to the river system and the lake. We ate dinner in a restaurant, about a block away from the Alamo, called The Chart House, at the top of the Tower of the Americas. The Tower is a leftover from the 1963HemisFair, and is a soaring concrete structure 780 feet high. That's a full 200 feet taller than the famous Seattle Space Needle! The entire upper floor rotates once an hour, giving the most incredible panoramic view of the entire area. The service and cuisine are fantastic, and the waiters actually appear at your table in teams and deposit your order in an astoundingly choreographed manner, almost like a professionally-rehearsed dance.

Wide View Of The Tower Of The Americas:


Closeup At Night Of The Tower Crown:


Lastly, for a REALLY cool QuickTime presentation of what it's like at the top, go here:
http://www.toweroftheamericas.com/360.html

A Hill Country Primer

This writer is fully aware that most of his readers hail from the Lone Star State; however, as this journal has grown, and as we travel the continent, I have begun receiving emails and comments from people as far away as California, Alaska, and Canada. In addition, there are folks we have met along the way who have expressed interest in keeping up with us through this medium (Hi Bob and Patty; hi Mike and Marlene!). SO: for those interested enough to read it, here is a condensed description of what I mean by the term 'the Texas Hill Country'.

The area in question is a region of Central Texas, that features rolling, (somewhat) rugged, hills that consist primarily of limestone. The Hill Country terrain can be seen in San Antonio's northern suburbs and Austin's western suburbs. It's essentially the eastern portion of the Edwards Plateau, bounded by the Balcones Fault on the east and the Llano Uplift to the west and north. The terrain is punctuated by a large number of limestone rocks and boulders and a thin layer of topsoil which makes the region prone to flash flooding.

Several cities were settled at the base of the Balcones Escarpment, including Austin, San Marcos, and New Braunfels, as a result of springs discharging water stored in the Edwards Aquifer.

Due to its karst topography, the area also features a number of caves, such as Inner Space Caverns and Natural Bridge Caverns. The deeper caverns of the area form several aquifers which serve as a source of drinking water for the residents of the area.

Several tributaries of the Colorado River (the Texas one, as opposed to the one that cuts the Grand Canyon. That one flows on the other side of the Continental Divide and drains into the Gulf of California), including the Llano and Pedernales rivers, which cross the region west to east and join the Colorado as it cuts across the region to the southeast, drain a large portion of the Hill Country. The Guadalupe, San Antonio, Frio, and Nueces rivers originate in the Hill Country.

These rivers are famous regionally, and somewhat less so elsewhere, for their excellent floating. 'Floating', for the uninitiated, consists primarily of dropping any kind of formal or improvised raft in the water, jumping onto it, and then going wherever the river takes you, consuming uncounted gallons of beer while braving melanoma and intermittent rapids. Arranging for someone to pick the up floaters further down the watercourse, while sometimes actually done, is of secondary importance. This results in the unorthodox appearance, on any sunny day, of significant numbers of bathing suit-clad, barefoot, drunk people, many with giant inner tubes in tow, hitching rides on any of a number of secondary highways in the region. This writer has, naturally, NEVER engaged in this undignified, humiliating behavior himself...

The area is also unique for its fusion of Spanish and Central European (German, Swiss, Austrian, Alsatian, and Czech) influences in food, beer, architecture, and music that form a distinctively "Texan" culture separate from the state's Southern and Southwestern influences. For example, the accordion was popularized in Tejano music in the 19th Century due to cultural exposure to German settlers. Any non-Hispanic construction worker anywhere in the U.S., if asked in confidence, will advise you that he wishes this were not so. Mexican polkas can be maddeningly, ahem, homogeneous.

In recent years, the region has emerged as the center of the Texas wine industry. Three American Viticultural Areas are located in the areas: Texas Hill Country AVA, Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country AVA, and Bell Mountain AVA. Texas wines, while still largely unknown internationally, have in recent years garnered an increasing amount of regional and North American acclaim.

Out Of Georgia. Tribulations. Bad Sentences.

The photo in the last post captioned 'Forrest Gump's Alabama' represents only a miniscule snapshot of the marathon drive back to Texas after finishing in Albany. We set a personal best that trip; we hauled our house EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE MILES that day, all the way to Greenville in North Texas, before calling calf-rope. Conclusion: fifteen hours is way too much, and there is a darned good reason why most RVers cap their travels at about 400 miles daily.

Anyway, we arrived at the Greenville KOA at about 10PM, fighting through intermittent thunderstorms all the way across Mississippi and Louisiana, and got set up and in bed by 11. At about 30 minutes past midnight, the tornado sirens in the vicinity all sounded at once, so I unhitched the trailer in the pouring rain and we vamoosed in the truck to the dubious protection of the nearest underpass. We took a family vote, and the consensus is that we don't wanna be in that 5th-wheel when it does its impression of an upended turtle.

8AM, no visible damage to either us or the house, and back on the road; we needed to be in McKinney TX by 9 to drop off the trailer at McClain's RV (our home dealer) for some yearly maintenance (bearing pack, A/C service, seal lubrication, etc.) and minor warranty work. We still had to pick up the little Bayliner (see the post about hauling that thing all the way from Maine) and we were due at a waterfront hotel called Lake LBJ Resort that afternoon. Had a suite and a boat slip waiting, and we really needed a little break from the (inevitable, I have concluded) slight but well-defined claustrophobia resulting from living in 200 square feet...

Got to Chad's (brother-in-law) office, where boat is stored in the back lot since we brought it back. Find that Plano had BIG hail in the same storm from last night; find boat's starboard glass shattered. Boat unusable as it sits. Haul it over to Chad and Michelle's to attempt patchwork repairs. Realize that ALL MY TOOLS ARE IN THE TRAILER. Repairs, even basic ones, logistically impractical. Blood pressure, adrenaline level and heart rate spike to stratospheric heights. Give up in disgust. Call the resort; they have a ski boat we can rent. AARRGH.

Call Bryan (that's Scotty's son, for the casual reader) in Fort Worth; ask him if he wants that stupid boat. He reacts enthusiastically. Hitch up boat, dogs, suitcases and wife, and haul currently-worthless boat 60 miles. Drop off boat. Notice with mild disinterest that he really has no room for boat. Wonder vaguely what the hell he was thinking. Decide I don't care and park it in his driveway with trailer tongue blocking the (public) sidewalk in front of his house.

At last, we were on the way to the Hill Country!

Last Savannah Post- I Promise- Paula Deen Tour

For those of my readers who have (a) been hiding with Osama, (b) been on a top-secret 5-year Mars expedition, or (c) absolutely no interest in such things, you need some background. The rest of you, read on anyway just for delight in exposure to my elegant prose.

There exists a highly popular cable/satellite TV channel called The Food Network. Essentially, its programming niche consists of about 736 million different people, each having his or her own show about various elements of the gastronomical arts, food selection and preparation, etc. etc. etc. I, and no doubt vast numbers of other men, have arrived at a sort of quid pro quo with our Significant Others. Specifically, we 'permit' (HA!) the TV to be tuned there for extended periods as a kind of barter currency to exchange for being allowed to (occasionally) watch football, the Sci-Fi Channel, and other belch-and-fart guy stuff.

Those of us guys that actually WATCH the durned thing from time to time (I know there are some because I've gotten other guys to admit it) will, if held at the point of a large-caliber firearm, admit that the network can occasionally be entertaining. I personally like The Food Doctor, Alton Brown, host of a show called Good Eats. He's cool 'cause he's actually a scientist and reminds me of Doctor Strangelove...

ANYWAY, it turns out that one of the superstars of the channel is a lady named Paula Deen. See if you recognize her; if not, choose (a) (b) or (c) above.

Paula Dean Stock Photo, Used Totally W/O Permission:


She is actually from Albany originally, and we got a unique insight into her early years because the owner of the RV park where we stayed, Jack Stone (famous throughout SW Georgia and Dougherty County and proud owner of Jack Stone's Creekside RV Resort) is also a 30-year County Commissioner and went to high school with both Paula and her long-time (and now ex-) husband Jimmy Deen.

Paula grew up dirt-poor, and is a pretty cool example of The American Dream. She now has about a jillion cookbooks, an autobiography that has sold more copies than The Bible, and two or three little shows on Food Network that together garner enough viewers to turn Ted Turner green. She puts two pounds of butter in every recipe and I can feel my arteries stenosing every time I see her face.

AGAIN ANYWAY, Allison is a huge fan, so we took a guided tour of Paula's Savannah and here are some pictures...

The Market Where Paula Got Her First Produce:


The Church Where Paula And Michael Groover Got Married:


Her shows are:
Paula's Home Cooking
Paula's Party

Her restaurants are:
The Lady And Sons
Bubba's Oyster House (see picture below, we met Bubba, Paula's brother here)

See her Web site here: http://www.pauladeen.com

Scotty And Allison And Bubba At Bubba's Oyster House:


NOTE: We had broiled oysters and what they call in Georgia a 'Low Country Boil' at Bubba's; that is one of the best restaurants we have ever been in. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Me On The Back Veranda At Bubba's; Yes, It Is Right On The Marsh:


AND NOW I'M DONE WITH GEORGIA. I can hear the cheers all the way from my current perch, which consists of my feet dangling in the (ICE-COLD!) Yellowstone River. I have a LOT more Georgia pictures, including one that I forgot to tell you about where a fellow RV couple felt sorry for the lone mallard in the pond at the campground. These people actually called a bird dealer (?!?) and had another duck DELIVERED TO THE CAMPGROUND. Wow, we RVers are a weird bunch...

Oh, Hell, Here It Is, Duck And New Friend:


FINALLY, A Candid Pic Of Forrest Gump's Alabama:


SO: we say adios, sayonara, hasta, goodbye to Georgia. Hadda good time there, folks are real nice, but DO NOT wanna be there when full summer arrives.

NEXT UP: Texas Hill Country, the Boat Fiasco, and lotsa other stuff. Tired now. Bye.

Tybee Island And My Version Of 'Tomorrow'

WELL! Obviously I am once again a lying, incompentent layabout whose personal temporal stream runs at a significantly more languid rate than others'. I guess I'll stop using the term 'tomorrow' because it never seems to work that way.

Anyway, here are the Tybee Island photos, captions, and random observations. As a reminder, a click on any of the pics will result in an expanded view. Then just hit 'back' on yer browser to return to the post.

Here's me on the beach at Tybee. Note the (unwitting) capture of the parasail at top left. Looks like a quarter moon. Those guys were HAULING. It was very windy and cold but the guys sailing seemed unfazed; maybe 'cause they had DRY SUITS and all I had was SHORTS.

Scotty On Beach At Tybee:

Tybee is an unlikely combination of South Padre, Coney Island, and Fort Knox. Everywhere one looks are reminders that this little lump of sand sits at the entrance to a strategically vital waterway (the aforementioned Savannah River). Jarringly intermingled with vacation homes, amusement parks and motels are fortifications ranging from earthworks from the Revolutionary period, to the still-visible berm raised by the Union forces when they zapped Pulaski (see previous post) to reinforced concrete howitzer emplacements of WWII vintage.

Allison And Mutts On WWII Gun Pad:


Howitzer Arc Looking At Cockspur Island:


In addition, the lighthouse here is one of the most historically and navigationally important on the lower East Coast. See here:
www.tybeelighthouse.org
if you're interested in the lighthouse's history. I'll tell you one thing; that darned thing is TALL. From the top (that is, once you catch your breath and fight off cowardice and vertigo) you can clearly see the river bridge at Savannah, and the city itself a good 20 miles upriver from the light.

The Tybee Light From The Ground:


In this next photo, note the position of Allison's left hand. The bruise on my waist from that Vulcan Grip Of Death hurt for almost a week.

At The Top Of The Tybee Light:


Looking Seaward From Tybee Light:


Looking NW From Tybee Light:


NOTE: The spit of land in the background is once again Cockspur Island (where you can vaguely make out Fort Pulaski to the right center). Directly below and to your front is the spot where the rifled artillery sat that killed the fort.

The First-Order Fresnel Lens, Tybee Light:


Some Of The 148 Stairs To Get To The Top:


Apropos Of Nothing, One Of About 164 Billion Azaleas We Saw:


OK, that's it for now. Next up: Scotty And Allison's Paula Deen Day (that's the Georgia lady from The Food Network, for the possibly one of you out there who hasn't heard of her). We took a tour that included the market she shops at, the church where she had her wedding, and lunch and photos at her restaurant Bubba's. I'll get back to ya soon.

Me

Fort Pulaski And Cockspur Island

Another in the never-ending (we hope!) series of side trips, taken this time from Savannah, was a day jaunt down the coast to Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, then to the popular resort of Tybee Island. As you will note later in this section, Tybee figures into the Fort Pulaski saga, so I am gonna kind of tie the two together; that’s appropriate ‘cause we did them both in one day anyway.

Fort Pulaski, built by the U.S. Army before the Civil War, is located near the mouth of the Savannah River, blocking upriver access to Savannah. Fortifications such as Pulaski, called third system forts, were considered invincible, but the new technology of rifled artillery changed that; as I noted in an earlier post, this little back-alley brawl changed warfare forever. On February 19, 1862, Union Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Sherman ordered Captain Quincy A. Gillmore, an engineer officer, to take charge of a seige force and begin the bombardment and capture of the fort. Gillmore emplaced artillery on Tybee Island, about a mile southeast of the fort, and commenced firing on April 10 after Confederate Colonel Charles H. Olmstead refused to surrender his command. Olmstead knew (or thought he knew) that the effective range of standard cannon was only ¾ mile, and thought that he and his garrison would kinda just be thumbing their noses at the Union forces across the strait. As far as Olmstead knew, the Union attackers might just as well have been throwing rocks for all the effect they could have at that range. BUT, the best-laid plans of men and mice, blah, blah; within hours, Gillmore’s rifled artillery had breached the southeast scarp of the fort, and he continued to pour shells through the resulting hole. Some of these destructive little airmail parcels shortly began to damage the traverse that shielded the powder magazine in the northwest bastion. Realizing that if the magazine exploded the fort would be seriously damaged and the garrison would suffer severe casualties, Olmstead surrendered after 2:00 pm on April 11. The supposedly-impregnable hunk of rock lasted LESS THAN 30 HOURS against modern riflery!! I am embarrassed for them.

The Fort From The Tybee Side:


The lighter areas of brick represent replacement stones, set after the war to plug the 747-sized chunk of the wall that was knocked out before the fort surrendered. Note the other holes caused by shells that 'just missed' what the Union guys were aiming at...

Another View Of The Damage:


Me Hiding From That D@*n%d Wind On The Gun Parapet:


Here is the one where I'm eating a piece of tooth-unfriendly bread called hardtack. Entire Army divisions used to survive on this crap and very little else. No wonder they all got scurvy and rickets. We bought it at the little store inside the fort. After I ate the whole thing (because Allison said I wouldn't) we looked at the wrapper and noted with mild interest the small print that read "historical reference only; NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION". Oh, well.

Scotty Eating Hardtack:


Just as an aside, the fort was named for the Polish Count Casimir Pulaski, who fought (and died!) valiantly fighting for the Americans in their ill-fated assault on Savannah during the Revolutionary War. Here (somewhat off-topic, I am fully aware) is a photo of his monument as it now stands in one of Savannah's squares. The breastworks where the British held off the Americans during this, the second-bloodiest battle of the Revolution after Bunker Hill, runs right under the obelisk.

Monument To Casimir Pulaski In Savannah:


Enough for today. I will pick up this post and give y'all the lowdown on Tybee tomorrow. Then, stay tuned in the next few days; I gotta get this thing up-to-date or I'll get so far behind I'll start omitting stuff. We're in Billings, Montana now, but I still hafta tell you about the 'Heinous Boat Trailer Disaster And Fire', as well as our trip to the Hill Country in April. And don't miss the 'Great Nebraska Blizzard And Stranding'. All this and more within the week.

Scotty

Savannah; A Birthday Drenching; A History Lesson

We are drifters, Gypsies, vagabonds, latter-day Kerouacs in an absurdly large Ford. Had Allison and I lived a hundred years ago, I truly believe you would have found us (IF you found us) curled in an empty boxcar, restlessly yearning toward the sunrise, our destination only realized when railroad police evict us, set us afoot, at a forgotten, dusty depot in some unnamed territory. (author's note: WARNING! WARNING! ROMANTIC, IDEALIZED CRAP ALERT!!!)

Toward the end of March we loaded up the dogs and our bindles (look it up, but it's more nostalgic hogwash, we use a space-age, waterproof nylon suitcase) and once again headed to the coast, this time a touch further north and the Southern Belle called Savannah. We were (as you may be) interested in the city's history, the aura of Americana surrounding this 'Flower of the South'; since we arrived in GA we had been advised uncountable times that no stay is complete without having spent time there. THEY WERE RIGHT.

Savannah was settled by a guy named James Oglethorpe in 1733. You can read his story at
http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/people/oglethorpe.html
and I highly recommend it for perspective. The area almost immediately became a center of commerce for exporting the products of the New World to England, France, and The Netherlands. Money and manufactured goods were likewise flowing back across the Atlantic, and the original colonists and their descendants did VERY well for themselves; the area grew and became strategically and politically influential.

Before we went there, this author had perceived the city mainly in the context of the American Civil War. In my weak defense, I am (not uniquely, I'm certain) a product of my experience and education; I only knew that which I had been told, been taught, or read. Georgia was the Old South; Savannah (Atlanta, Charleston, Birmingham, insert your choice here) epitomized the Confederacy, its traditions and mores, that became the iconic conflict, good vs. evil, that almost destroyed the United States in the mid-19th century. To be sure, much of the history of Savannah is inextricably woven into the dark fabric of that shameful and inexcusable era of the 'peculiar institution' also known as African Slavery. But it is also so much more...

My preconceptions were immediately demonstrated to be unforgivably naive, simplistic and uninformed. A closer look at this area and its people recounts a story of almost-unbelievable courage, endurance, and sacrifice. Unfathomable hardships were endured by the city's founders (and the first generation after them), that the fledgling democracy first conceived in Philadelphia in 1776 would not draw its last breath in the same decade as its first. To paraphrase (badly, I fear) Thomas Jefferson's famous quote: the blood of patriots (and their brave British and Loyalist adversaries) consecrates the very foundations of this city. See here http://www.americanrevolution.com/BattleofSavannah.htm
for what I believe is the definitive account of these inspirational (and poignant) events.

Well! Enough sermonizing and enough of my annoying newfound habit of burdening you, dear reader (apologies to Stephen King), with additional homework. Suffice it to say that we knew NOTHING about this beautiful, graceful, dignified city until we came here, until we listened carefully to the whispers of ghosts that reputedly prowl restlessly the narrow alleys, the ruined fortifications, the misty harbor. I am humbled by (and ashamed of) my ignorance.

Now here are the photographs. As always, click on the pic for a larger view. If you are persistent and thorough, you will discover what I mean by 'A Birthday Drenching' as contained in the title of this post. I'm sure you will find it comical; I did.

Statue Of James Oglethorpe, Chippewa Square:


Forsythe Square... They Really Have Dead Guys Under The Statues!


Oglethorpe Landed Here... This Is The Cotton Exchange


I'm about worn out now. Lots more pictures tomorrow.

S.

OK, here's some more stuff from Savannah. Sorry about the delay, I am just now recovering from a MOST UNPLEASANT medical 'oops!'. The procedure is called Lithotripsy, an arcane, misleadingly bland word essentially meaning 'you have a kidney stone the size of a marble; if we don't get it out, you are an excellent candidate for dialysis and, ultimately, placement on a transplant list, so we are gonna blast it outta ya with a hypersonic death ray, BWWAAAHHH HAA HAAA HAA!!!' (evil guffaw and demonic wringing of hands unsettlingly reminiscent of Snidely Whiplash).

The Riverboat We Had Allison's Birthday Cruise On:


THIS Is The 'Birthday Drenching'. The Waiter Apparently Decided I Needed A 32-Ounce Savannah Sling, Ice And All, Down The Back Of My Neck:

NOTE: There were about a hundred people in our section of the ship's dining room when this happened. The room became VERY silent for about 15 seconds; after that, well, have you ever heard the sound of about fifty cell-phone cameras, video cameras, and regular digital cameras ALL FIRING SIMULTANEOUSLY!?! These people were tourists from all over the U.S., and about a half dozen other countries. I sincerely hope this is not, for me, what Andy Warhol had in mind when he uttered his iconic 'fifteen minutes of fame' remark...

NOTE 2: When this happened, my shirt was tucked in, net effect of which is that ALL the ice in the drink found its way down the back of my jeans. HA! FUNNY!

We did the Historic District in an unorthodox (for Savannah) way, but one in which everyone who knows us will find no surprise. We parked every day south of downtown, unlimbered our bikes, and rode the entire area. I highly recommend that you do it this way; we had no traffic problems and Savannah's famous Squares are all bicycle-friendly. In effect, we went right through and around all twenty-one of them, something that would be impossible in a car or on a guided tour.

RECOMMENDED READING: Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. The Quintessential and authoritative reference on the Savannah we saw. AMAZINGLY on target, highly accurate both sociologically and geographically.

Jim Williams' Mercer House From The Book:


Forsythe Park, Also Featured Prominently In The Book:


From The Front Patio, Owens-Thomas House. Looking At Square:


Colonial Park Cemetery, SEE NOTE BELOW PHOTO

NOTE BELOW PHOTO (HA! humor!) During the Civil War, Union troops were stationed at the cemetery because it was ideal for horses. The troops often searched for valuables among the graves. Some of the soldiers were mischievous; they tampered with dates on some of the tombstones. If the (modified) dates were correct, the oldest person buried there lived to be over a thousand years old!
This joint was closed to new burials in 1853. The oldest graves here date from 1750. Note the gravestones along the back wall; these were moved around and knocked over by the Union soldiers. There were no reliable records about who was where, so they just placed those stones along the back wall and called it good.

That's all for today. We are leaving Georgia on the 8th of April, and I got lotsa work to do to get us ready to travel. BUT: Check back often in the next few days, Dear Readers, as I'm not even CLOSE to being done with Savannah, its history, and the pictures. This is going to be a long, involved post, but I promise it will be worth your while to stick with it. I haven't yet showed you 'impregnable' Fort Pulaski, on Cockspur Island, that was brought to its knees (does a fort have knees?) by the Union in 1862. In thirty hours a newfangled, high-tech artillery technology called the 'rifled barrel' punched holes in this thing, and that very day the nature of warfare changed forever. And we still have to visit Tybee Island, and its pirates and patriarchs. Oh, my, I have LOTS more. Stay tuned.

Later,
S.

Okefenokee Swamp And The Golden Isles

We were off for another whirlwind tour. On the itinerary: the vast wetland misnamed the Okefenokee Swamp (tabbed as one of the Great Wonders of the North American continent by every exploratory guide we own; in actuality, a giant peat bog) and, almost as an afterthought and because it was close, the Georgia Atlantic Coast.

We drove east from Albany for about two hours through pine tree farms and pecan groves (we have yet to encounter a peach-growing area; I think they are either hiding them from us, or Georgia's nickname 'The Peach State' is just a big fib) to the north end of the area formally named Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Historic Area. We would never have known there was anything special about this place if it wasn't staring at us from the map; all you can see from the highway is dense pine forest and billions of saw palmetto bushes to the south and west of Route 22. I could almost hear 'Dueling Banjos' off in the distance; the only sounds were bird cries and the occasional staccato stutter of an air ratchet, emanating from an unending series of failing mom-and-pop farm equipment repair shops (which, by the way, appear to be Georgis's premier industry).

Eventually the highway widened perceptibly and we arrived, to much fanfare and blaring of trumpets (NOT!), in a little burg called Folkston, which styles itself on the Web as 'Gateway to the Okefenokee'.

Lemme tell ya a little about the town of Folkston, Georgia. It's a two-stoplight case study in obscurity, whose entire paddock of deluxe accomodations consists of (as we immediately discovered) the Jihadist Weekly five-camel-rated 'Relax Inn' and its counterpart, the fabulous (also Arab-owned) 'Western Hotel' right next door. Both 'resorts' sport professionally-drawn Web addresses listing an extensive array of amenities, so impressive that I've detailed them below. The accompanying parentheticals are this author's personal observations.

1) Heated, fenced outdoor pools (both empty, chained, in the process of returning to the land from whence they came and, from what I could see, home to an all-species-inclusive collection of the area's unwanted pet population both animate and deceased).

2) Restaurant/club combinations (now C/W-themed greasy spoon/beer joints catering mainly to backwoods roughnecks and couples with '74 Chevy pickups, his-and-hers mullet haircuts and unsatisfactory or nonexistent dental plans).

3) Opulent, graceful lobbies (true, but that's 'cause they are permanently locked; you register by the always-dignified expedient of standing in the rain and shouting through the little movie-theater-type grill in the bulletproof glass. You can SEE the lobby, you just can't GO IN the lobby. The burkha-clad refugee that checked us in never even asked for a name, usually a bad sign).

SO: it was with substantially diminished expectations that we set out for the object of the exercise, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Historic Area (I'm not typing THAT again, so we'll just call it the ONWRAHA from here on out).

AND: almost-overwhelmingly-pleasant surprise: The National Park and its accompanying privately-run EcoTourist facility is REALLY NICE. Miles and miles of hiking and biking trails, guided powerboat tours, canoe and kayak rentals for self-guided exploration, a very nice gift shop and museum... they do a fantastic job of teaching the history, ecology, biology and paleontology of the area.

Since it was the middle of February, we were delighted to find the temperature in the upper 70s the day we were there. We chose the 20-mile bike path that ends up at the Boardwalk, which is a very cool hiking route that takes you right out in the swamp for about 2 miles each way. It's a good way to get out in the middle without needing chest-high waders (not to mention staying at arm's length from the moccasins and gators) and gives a good opportunity to see the wildlife without disturbing the fragile, balanced systems (small footprints, remember?).

Before we get to the pictures, you might wanna read the (unabashedly purloined from the Forest Service Web site) background below about the Swamp:

The Okefenokee Swamp is approximately 7000 years old. It is a vast peat-filled bog inside a huge, saucer-shaped depression that was once part of the ocean floor.
The elevation of the swamp varies. There is a 25 foot drop from the northwest side to the southwest side. The range in elevation is from 128 feet above sea level on the northeast side to 103 feet on the southwest side. The vegetative indicator of the natural swamp line is the presence of the saw palmetto.
The Suwannee River is the principle outlet of the swamp. The Suwannee flows from the west side of the swamp and empties into the Gulf of Mexico near Cedar Key, Florida. The Suwannee River is 280 miles long.
A small area of the southeastern part of the swamp is drained by the St. Marys River. The St. Marys River empties into the Atlantic near St. Marys, Georgia. The St. Marys River is 190 miles long.
The Okefenokee Swamp derives its name from Choctaw Indian words meaning "quivering earth" or "Land of the Trembling Earth."

On The Bike Trail, Literally Within Arm's Reach, Gator And Baby:


The Chaffee Homestead; They Actually LIVED Here Till The 1950s:


Carnivorous Pitcher Plants- THEY EAT BUGS AND SMALL ANIMALS!:


The Intrepid Explorers On The Nature Trail:


Unless You've Been Here, You Can't Believe How Quiet It Is:


A Good Pic From The Boardwalk:


A Rest After About 15 Miles, The Boardwalk:


We Saw About A Million Of These:


Finally, View From The Observation Tower, End Of The Boardwalk:


After a full day at the ONWRAHA (my sloth really knows no bounds) we regretfully (!) bade adieu to the Relax Inn and headed for the Georgia Atlantic Coast and the array of barrier islands known as The Golden Isles.

Geographical points, interesting because they directly affect the (human) history of the area:

1) If you glance at a map of the Eastern Seaboard, you might notice that Georgia's small section of coast lies the furthest west you can get and still be on the Atlantic. This has the serendipitous effect of dramatically limiting the intensity and historical frequency of hurricane landings along this stretch of shoreline. So if you have trouble recalling the last time you heard about Georgia being devastated by an Atlantic storm, that's because it rarely happens.

2) Because of the unique bend in the coastline, the Continental Shelf (the edge of the North American Tectonic Plate where sea depths increase precipitously, out into real oceanic regions) lies much further from the waterline than at anywhere else in eastern North America. This results in a seriously shallow angle of descent for the sea floor off Georgia's coast; we were given an average of about 2 feet per mile (by the Coast Guard station on St. Simon's Island) as the average fall-off for the first 20 miles out to sea. That means incoming waves, either from a storm or just regular tidal forces, expend their energy much further from the beach than is normal; as a result, the barrier islands are very stable. This is in direct contrast to the Carolinas (or Massachusetts around Cape Cod), where it's not uncommon for barrier islands (fundamentally just sand) to appear and then be washed away on a seasonal or even event-based cycle.

Net effect: it's much safer and saner to build on the islands adjoining Georgia's seashore than just about anywhere else on the East Coast; you can be fairly sure that anything you put up as a resort or vacation home won't be just floating in pieces out by Bermuda the next time you wanna go there.

Two of the abovementioned islands comprised our objective: St. Simon's Island, home of the Georgia Coast Lifesaving Station (later to become incorporated into the United States Coast Guard), and Jekyll Island, which was at one time a private club At the turn of the century, tycoons, politicians, and socialites flocked to Jekyll Island to revel in their own luxury and America's new wealth. The Jekyll Island Club was described in the February 1904 issue of Munsey's Magazine as “the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world.” Its members included J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, Joseph Pulitzer, William K. Vanderbilt; other recognizable surnames on the roster were Macy, Goodyear, and Gould. The 'summer cottages' still standing, and which comprise the Jekyll Island Museum, are absolutely amazing in their excesses and, as such, make the island positively reek of old money.

The 1810 Coast Guard Station At St. Simons Island:


The Sidney Lanier Bridge, St Simon's To Mainland:


Because of the gradual gradient as detailed above, these islands are separated from the mainland not by open water (except in the case of the IntraCoastal Waterway, a shipping route kept dredged to allow huge container vessels to access the Brunswick port, and various other channels for small commercial, sporting and pleasure craft), but by miles upon miles of salt marsh. The wetland is flooded at high tide and the water recedes twice a day. This makes for one of the most prolific ecosystems in ths coastal U.S., and is a world- renowned bird sanctuary.

The Tidal Marsh At St. Simon's:


The Biggest Oak Trees We've Ever Seen:


Some Of The Local Residents: