Day 59 - Savannah: Forsyth park, Colonial Park Cemetery, Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters

This morning we are ready to explore this town from top to bottom. I have my sneakers on and my google day trip planner on my phone. We need to get our steps in. 

Savannah's heart is a rectangular historical district, facing the Savannah river, starting from the river walk market, and growing south as the city got larger. At each addition, homes were added together with their own squares, which functioned as public spaces for communal kitchens and places of business. There are currently 22 squares, shaded by live oak trees covered by silvery Spanish moss, shading manicured gardens studded by blooming azaleas, all framing either a statue or a fountain.

This district is the largest National Historic Landmark District in the United States. The city has no skyscrapers, or even tall buildings. The streets are covered in cobblestones. Its colonial style homes ooze of history. Walking is the only way to see this city and this is the most relaxing walk you can have.  

We park around Forsyth park. We walk down on Whitaker Street. 

Live Oaks

Wright Square

We stopped by the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of America.

We wondered around the Colonial Park Cemetery. 

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

We took the tour of the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters.
The house had been restored, through painstaking research on all the details, from the drapery to the wall paper and stairs runner. The slaves quarters had been restored and their story was told extensively.

We walked back to Forsyth park, and took some time by a monument dedicated to all the Confederate Soldiers who died during the civil war. I took several pictures. It might not be around next time 😉

Confederate Monument

By the end of the day I had done almost 19,961 steps, as recorded on my Google fit!

Day 58 - Savannah: Good Times Jazz Club

In 1994, the book "Midnight in the garden of good and evil" came out and it became the longest-standing New York Times Best-Seller. I estimated that it was right around then or maybe a year later before the movie came out that I read it. Well, that's how long I have been waiting to visit this town.
I got immediately sucked into the story and fell in love with this place.
I can't believe it, I am finally here, after travelling for almost two months across the states.
But we are exhausted and we need to do some house keeping, like laundry, grocery shopping, blogging and cat issues. Some unnamed cat is not happy with her litter box...
So we spent most of the day taking care of things.
Yesterday after the long trip from Okefenokee, we wondered around the river walk. It was really busy with folks enjoying the weekend with drinks and music in the many pubs along the Savannah river. We turned in early too tired to fight the crowd.

Today it's Sunday and it's the right time to celebrate and go out for a fancy dinner after running errands.
Hopefully the crowd has reduced. Folks need to go home and get ready for their working week. Come on, get a move on!

We chose a restaurant not far from the city market, Good Times Jazz Bar.
The food was excellent. I had pan-fried catfish with collard greens and Savannah red rice, Bill had the same but with a side dish of country butter beans and okra.
The jazz band was The Eric Jones Trio with jazz violinist Ricardo Ochoa.

It was the perfect thing to do for an amazing introduction to food and music.
Ochoa played several tracks and, before each, he gave us a small introduction about famous jazz violinists and their style. He told us stories about Eddy South, Stuff Smith and Stéphane Grappelli.
Then they just played jazz, some taking off known songs like 'You are the sunshine of my life' from Stevie Wonder. What a treat!

This video does not represent how well they play. Eric Jones. the bass player and the drummer are very talented musicians. I highly recommend this place and the band.

Day 57 - Stephen C Foster State Park to Savannah

The Biltmore RV park is no frills, in the sense that we got only the hookups, including cable with few channels. There are no bathrooms or laundry. It's by a busy road that gets noisy in the morning, but at night it's really quiet.
The best part is that it's only 10 minutes from downtown Savannah and you can come and go at your leisure, and the price is right.

Day 56 - Okefenokee Swamp: Stephen C Foster State Park, Billy's lake, Minnie's lake

When the weather man says that there is a 60% chance of rain, in California we take the news as a blessing and then dismiss it because in any case it's going to look like spits from the sky. Not the case in Georgia, especially if you are sitting in the middle of a swamp. But then again we are a middle-aged couple that has gone into a middle-age crisis together and have a passion not for danger but with pushing our luck! We are not going to tell the story about last summer when we almost... because we really wanted to do a ferrata in the middle of a thunder storm in the Dolomites.

Here the place is different but the story line is similar.

So today we went back to Millie's lake because I thought I didn't spend enough time inside that magical world since we had to return the kayak by 5 pm.

This time we rented a canoe. We first read the manual online to be good canoe mates and work together to have the best experience. That worked out really well: me at the bow as the power engine, and Bill at the stern as helmsman. I was to paddle and draw, he was to sweep and draw. We were cool, we were doing a great job...until it commenced to rain, actually it was more like someone had turned on a hose on us. Luckily we were able to get to the Minnie's lake shelter before we got too wet. So now we had to wait it out...for an hour. I can safely say that this time I had the chance to spend enough time in this magical world.

Stormy adventures is the way we roll!

Along the way, we were lucky to encounter many beautiful creatures including baby gators all bunched up together.

Barred Owl, no zooming involved in this picture

Never-wet flowers, the only member of the Orontium genus.

pond-cypress knees

Day 55 - Okefenokee Swamp: Stephen C Foster State Park

Alligators, alligators and more alligators... large, medium, small... alone or bunched up in a group... they are everywhere we look. They are the American Alligator and it has estimated that 12,000 of them live in the Okefenokee swamp. But no worries, there hasn't been an accident since 1936.

Fun fact: a crocodile can be distinguished from an alligator by its snout. Crocodiles have more elongated snouts, while alligators have more of a blunt snout with a bump. Also alligators are less aggressive than crocodiles.

We took an hour and a half boat tour with a guide in the morning. Our guide was very knowledgeable and he entertained us with all kinds of facts about the flora and fauna of the Okefenokee swamps.

The first stretch of the trip took us to Billy's lake, an open area of the swamps. The water was so still that it looked like black oil. The reflections made perfect mirror images.

The trees in this area were scarce due to several past fires, fueled by the peat moss present in this swamp during drought periods. On 2007 a fire burned the entire park. Then there was another one in 2011. The forest is still recovering and it will take several years. But I guess it's just another phase in the swamp, as a naturally occurring event.

We drove up the lake and then we turned into a side tributary. The river got smaller and we saw more bald and pond cypresses and yellow water lilies, not yet in bloom.

Our guide showed us an aquatic plant with small yellow flowers called Bladderwort which is carnivorous. In its root system the plant has several bladders with holes. A small nematode or a small insect larva can enter but cannot leave. The trapped insect then decomposes, releasing nitrogen needed by the plant.

Bladderwort flowers

The bubbles are in fact bladders

In the afternoon,we decided to rent a kayak to go further than where the guide had taken us.
We wanted to go all the way to Minnie's lake. It was a paddle of 3.8 miles one way. It was worth it!

Mama turtle with baby

Cormorants

Large gator

Shelter at Minnie's lake

By the shelter, we were lucky to see a small raccoon fishing in the marsh. It looked so nervous and in a hurry, being a raccoon in water infested with gators. It was not distracted by our presence in its search for food. 

Not yet happy with our adventure, we wanted to explore more of the swamp. Our guide directed us to an area outside the park called the River Sill. The primary purposes of the Suwannee River Sill were to facilitate wildfire control by creating impounded conditions during periods of drought, and to arrest the spread of wildfires across the landscape by prolonging inundation. Unfortunately the sill did not work as expected. Moreover, at a certain point of its history, a breach formed. So now it has lost completely its usefulness, but it makes for a nice hike for fishermen and tourists. 

White Ibis

We may have inadvertently saved an ibis while walking by! Right after Bill stopped filming, the gator went back into the water with a big splash, feeling frustrated by our presence.

Find the intruder

how many are there in this picture?