Savannah

The Mercer house (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)

One of 21 squares in town

Factors walk by the river front.

One of Savannah's amazing live oaks with moss and ferns.

Cat down by the Savannah River.

Friday 4 December 2009

Charleston AFB, SC

It was really cold this morning. Perhaps prematurely we took a blanket off the bed yesterday. Now we are thinking that might have been a bad idea.

We got up early, but not quite early enough for Revelry. We did hear it yesterday morning. The first night we were here we had to stop and salute for Retreat. But we were away from base for it last night. We have not heard Taps here yet. I did get to hear it several times at Hanscom. It is a soothing song to hear when you are safely in your abode.

This morning we are; however, hearing machine gun fire. We must be fairly near a range. There is also a lot of activity going on around us. There are morning PT (physical training) games of football going on in the field around us. We are getting ready for our drive to Savannah

Savannah was awesome. The drive there was not so great. Rob wanted to take a coastal route which turned out to be 35 – 45 mph and all we could see were trees. We finally hooked up with the main highway. It was about 2 ½ hours. We stopped first at a welcome center. There we purchased jump-on-jump-off trolley tour. There are 15 stops and it takes about 90 min. It was very fascinating. There is just so much history there. There are huge, enormous Oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from them. There are “squares” everywhere, which are grassy parks with either fountains in the center or statues or just sitting areas. Then all the houses are built up around them.

There is a huge oak tree which is fenced off. It is believed to be several hundreds of years old. It is beautiful. Not only does it have the Spanish moss hanging from it, but the huge main branches all have fern growing on them. Our guide called it rejuvenating. In the summer all the fern dries up and dies away. Then when the cool weather comes the fern all grows back. I am glad we were in the season to see it.

We found a “famous” Bar-B-Q joint and walked to it. We were both disappointed. It was the too vinegary kind of sauce.

From there we walked to “The Book Store” It has all the books and museum stuff from “Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil” which was not only filmed here, but was all based on a true story and true characters. It was a neat shop and I wish I could have bought a book on each of the characters. Lady Chablis especially is very interesting. She is the drag queen in the book and is a real and famous person. She is from Savannah and comes back here to perform several times a year. She will be back in Savannah on the 19^th of this month and I would love to see her. But, we will be gone.

From there we went to the Mercer House. It is where Jim Williams lived until he died and his family still lives there. The down stairs is opened to the public for tours at various times. It is amazing. He was an antique dealer and then got in to restoring homes. The Mercer home was originally Johnny Mercer’s who is a famous song writer/performer. Jim Williams restored it and lived in it and it is filled with amazing original prints dating way back, as well as furniture and other things, to include a pair of crystal candle sticks that belonged to Martha and George Washington. It was in his office where the murder occurred. It was very fascinating. I bought a book on his restoration projects which were not only fascinating but gives the history of who the people were who owned the homes and stuff.

From there we walked about looking for various Geocaches. We did find one, and tried to find another, but it started to rain and was starting to get back so we walked through the city and back to the car.

It rained pretty hard all the way back. It took us just two hours to get back.

While we were traveling from Boston to Raleigh we listened to the book “Twilight”. We really liked it and are anxious to listen to the next one. Anyway, the second movie has already been released and we hadn’t seen the first. We stopped at a grocery store near base and they had one of those dollar rent a movie machines so we rented Twilight. We brought it home and watched it. We were really disappointed. I generally am disappointed with the movies after reading the books. Except of course for the Harry Potter movies.

We went to bed