19. Savannah

We set up our Savannah base camp near Hardeeville, South Carolina, about ten miles north of the city. It was convenient and an easy drive into town.

Many of these east coast areas are so important in American history that we have to share a little of the background with you. If you're yawning a lot, let us know.

Savannah is Georgia’s oldest city. It was established by British General James Oglethorpe in 1733. One of its original purposes was to protect British interests from the Spanish, who controlled Florida to the south. Oglethorpe was successful, in large part, because he treated the local Indians with respect, unlike many other early intruders. They, in turn, were instrumental in the success of his new settlement, which gradually grew into a busy colonial British outpost. Oglethorpe is clearly the local hero and his name is on streets, parks, buildings and statues all over town. This is his main statue and plaque in Oglethorpe Square.

Savannah prides itself in its natural beauty, preserved architecture and colorful history. It's also known for its old-fashioned Southern charm and as the home of Paula Deen from the TV Food Network. She operates a popular downtown restaurant. The waiting line is usually at least three hours. Our time is too valuable to spend standing in line, so we ate elsewhere.

Being retired city planners, we were interested in the city's basic lay-out, its most important physical feature. Oglethorpe designed the city with a tight grid system of streets and wards. Within the pattern, he placed 24 public squares to serve the business, social and defensive needs of each ward. Three of the squares have been lost to “progress”, but 21 remain today and are carefully protected by the citizenry.

Today, the squares are small parks that serve their surrounding neighborhoods. Each square has its own identity and personality. Some have monuments or statues while others have fountains or other central features. The James Madison Square features vintage cannons. Wright Square is the final resting place of Tomochichi, the local Indian leader who helped Oglethorpe establish the colony. All are beautiful and most have well-maintained flower gardens, lots of trees and are shaded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss.

We took a trolley tour for a quick overview of Savannah, then did a lot of walking to see the details. After treading over old brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets in the heat and humidity, we were hot, our feet were throbbing and it was a relief to arrive at one of the squares and rest a while on a shady park bench. If you saw the movie, it was in Chippewa Square where Forrest Gump sat on a park bench with his box of chocolates and told his life’s story. The bench is in a local museum, but the square is unchanged and there are lots of benches on which to sit, eat chocolates and tell stories. The next night, the movie "Forrest Gump" was on TV, so we watched it again from our new perspective.

If 24 squares weren’t enough, Savannah’s Forsyth Park makes up for any deficit. Ron is standing in the central walkway. The large fountain in the background is the centerpiece. A newer addition to the park contains this large monument to the many Confederates who died in the Civil War. It’s a great place to walk, bicycle, sit a spell or, if you're lucky, attend a concert.

The Civil War was a very destructive period throughout the South. Many cities and large plantations were destroyed by Union armies. Savannah, being a Confederate city, became a target for destruction by Union Gen. William Sherman as he marched across Georgia destroying everything in sight. When Sherman got to Savannah, the Confederate general realized they were going to lose so he withdrew his troops to save the City. Sherman entered the city peacefully on Christmas Day, 1864, and offered it to President Lincoln as a present.

Juliette Gordon Low was an influential local personality. She grew up in Savannah, married wealthy Englishman William Low and endured an unhappy marriage. When “Willie” died, Juliette found herself alone and with money, but without a purpose in life. Then she met Baden Powell at a dinner in England. He had just formed the Boy Scouts but didn’t know what to do with all the girls who wanted to join. He asked Juliette if she would do something for the girls. With Powell’s assistance, she formed the Girl Guides in England and Scotland and later brought the idea to the U.S. We didn't know that she was also an accomplished artist. We saw many of her paintings, sculptures and designs for gates and other iron work during the tour of her birthplace and museum. It’s a popular tour stop and the city’s first designated National Historic Landmark.

We couldn’t pass up a peek into some of Savannah’s beautiful churches, especially the amazing Gothic-style Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Many changes and additions have been made since the original cornerstone was laid in 1800. The cathedral was damaged by hurricanes and mostly destroyed by fire in 1898, but it always emerged better than before. It was a religious experience just entering this building with its tall columns, 70 ft. high arched ceilings, marble railings, floors and alter, huge pipe organ and many colorful murals and stained glass windows. This building is a masterpiece.

River Street follows the Savannah River and provides a clean modern walkway for visitors to view the boats and river activities. We crossed the large bridge in the background every day to get to our RV park on the South Carolina side.

Some of Savannah's oldest commercial buildings and cotton warehouses still line the riverfront. Today, it's an interesting mix of the old buildings, brick and cobblestone streets, small shops and eateries. We watched some of the river activities and stopped at Huey's for a cold drink and an excellent muffuletta (a popular sandwich in the South).

The old and very bumpy cobblestone streets were made from the ballast of British sailing ships. They dumped the rocks here before filling their ships with cotton and other products for the trip back to Europe. [We took a similar blue trolley tour of the city.]

Behind the riverfront buildings is a narrow alley called Factors Walk. Factors were brokers and sales agents who worked in the cotton market and other businesses and did much of their business at this location. It's still a place for business and a good place to see the true character of these old buildings.

We seem to agree that the jewels of Savannah are the beautiful neighborhoods. We saw block after block of big and small mostly brick homes with lots of ironwork and interesting brick and cobblestone streets. This is high density. Most homes are very close together, have very small yards or small courtyards and few garages. Streets are narrow and parking is hard to find. Huge live oaks create full canopies over the streets, which is essential for shade from the hot summer sun. Our tour guide assured us that strict design controls are in place to ensure that the historic district will become increasingly valuable over time.

We had to get away from the city for a little beach time. So, we drove down to “famous” Hilton Head. It’s a ritzy island with lots of development, condos, private gated communities, expensive cars and golf courses. Interesting to see, but not our kind of place. We stopped for lunch on the deck of the Crazy Crab (photo), overlooking miles of marshlands and Carolina Lowcountry (will explain in next chapter). Ron was looking forward to a nice juicy oyster sandwich. However, the waitress messed up the order and delivered a flounder sandwich instead. The waitress apologized, it was accepted, and it was the best flounder sandwich Ron ever had.

Public beach access was hard to find on Hilton Head. So, we stopped at the local Westin Hotel and walked through their lobby and pool area and onto "their" beach (photo). It was beautiful and nearly empty, but we didn’t stay very long. We later went to Tybee Island, which is closer to Savannah, more affordable and family oriented. We found a good spot for our chairs on a nice stretch of beach near the Tybee Island lighthouse. It was a perfect place to work on our tans and do a little wading.

Fort Pulaski Nat’l. Monument was along the Tybee Island highway, so we stopped to take a look. It’s a very well-preserved and restored fort with interesting brickwork, a 7 ft. deep moat and old Civil War guns. It took 18 years and 25 million bricks to build. The photo shows part of the interior and foundation brickwork. On April 10, 1862, Union forces opened fire on Fort Pulaski from nearby Tybee Island. The fort took a beating and the Confederates surrendered after 30 hours of bombardment.

We arrived just in time to watch a cannon demonstration. They described the different types of artillery used in the Civil War and fired off a couple rounds. Very loud! The Civil War must have been a very loud war, with lots of hearing loss.

There’s so much more that we could write about Savannah, and lots of pictures, but we're trying to keep it to a manageable size so you'll come back for the next chapter. It’s a beautiful and well-preserved city. We felt like we were taking a stroll through history. We really enjoyed it. Next stop . . . Charleston.

18. St. Augustine - our oldest city

We learned in school about Chris Columbus discovering America in 1492. Nearly 30 years later, a group of settlers was greeted by friendly Indians when they landed at Plymouth Rock. They shared a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, corn-on-the-cob and pumpkin pie. My memory is a little hazy, but it was something like that. I also vaguely remember the name Ponce de Leon, but the history books didn’t give him the credit he deserved for his role in the history of Florida and the U.S. Here’s a little background:

Columbus landed in the West Indies and never actually reached the mainland. Ponce de Leon accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to the “new world” in 1493. They landed in Hispaniola, now the Dominican Republic. About 15 years later, Ponce was sent to explore and conquer the island that is now Puerto Rico. He succeeded and was appointed governor of the island. He later heard about a garden island called Biminy. It had a fountain of youth. He obtained a permit from King Ferdinand to look for the island. He set out with three ships and landed in what is now St. Augustine on Easter Sunday, 1513, thinking it was the island of Biminy. He named the land La Florida (the flower) and claimed the territory for Spain.

Near his landing location, Ponce de Leon found a large spring and a band of extremely health Timucuan Indians. They drank the water, lived twice as long as the average Spaniard, and grew to an average height well over six feet (Ponce was 4’-11”). He believed he had found the “Fountain of Youth.” He didn’t know that it was tribal tradition that the tallest man married the tallest woman and they gradually created a tall tribe. Ponce took vast amounts of the water back to Puerto Rico to drink and bathe in, and he lived 61 years, which was old for that time. He might have lived longer, but he died of an infection from a wound following a struggle with the Calusa Indians. They didn’t want Spanish settlers moving into their territory on the west coast of Florida and fought long and hard to keep them out.

Today, the Fountain of Youth Park is an interesting collection of historical data about Ponce de Leon’s life and discoveries, as well as the story of the Timucuan Indians. A celestial planetarium explains early astrological sailing techniques that Ponce used to find his way around, and there's a monument at the original landing site (photo). The spring has been preserved and all visitors get a free cup of water. We feel much younger now.

The first settlement of St. Augustine took place about 50 years after Ponce de Leon’s first visit. Another Spanish explorer, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, brought soldiers, priests and colonists to the site in 1565 and established what is now the oldest continually occupied European settlement in North America. During the next couple hundred years, the British, French and Spanish fought over the territory. In an attempt to save the city, walls and moats were built around it. The original gates to the city have been preserved (photo). Still, the city changed hands several times. Many settlers died and the community was burned down or severely damaged by Sir Francis Drake and others before finally becoming part of Florida and the United States.

We took the trolley tour of the city, did the walking tour of the old section and saw the oldest schoolhouse, oldest drugstore, first Catholic church and many other interesting buildings. The oldest house (below) was originally built in 1650 and rebuilt after the city was burned down in 1702.
The oldest masonry fort in the U.S. is the Castillo de San Marcos. It dates back to 1672 and is still standing solid on the waterfront. It was built with coquina, a soft shellrock formation that was mined nearby. The rock is full of shells and gets very hard when exposed to air. It was used extensively for foundations, walls, sidewalks and other purposes. A similar building material called tabby used oyster shells in its mix and was used primarily for walls.

Downtown St. Augustine is a grid of narrow streets. One street is only six feet wide. St. George Street (below) has been turned into a pedestrian-only street and is full of shops and restaurants. The less busy residential streets are quiet and full of character. Preservation is a high priority in St. Augustine. Strict design controls make sure that new development doesn’t corrupt the character of the town.

The most influential of early St. Augustine developers was Henry Flagler. He was also a railroad pioneer and co-founder of Standard Oil (with J.D. Rockefeller). The Flagler name is everywhere. One of his greatest achievements was construction of the Hotel Ponce de Leon. It was built in 1887 with amazing craftsmanship and intended for the rich and famous. Many Tiffany windows still surround the dining hall. Ornate murals, tile and hand-carved woodwork are everywhere. This was one of the first major buildings wired for electricity by Thomas Edison himself. The clock above the fireplace was made and installed by Edison. The hotel was originally wired for DC current and visitors were getting shocked. Since that wasn't acceptable, Flagler hired a staff whose only job was to turn light switches on and off. The hotel eventually deteriorated and was purchased by Flagler College which spent $23 million restoring the building. Today, it’s a beautiful showplace and a great campus for the 2,000 student private college.

A couple miles outside St. Augustine is Anastasia Island with long beautiful beaches. We packed the sunscreen, beach chairs, towels, sunglasses, etc., and set out for an afternoon of cooling off in the surf.
As we were leaving the beach, a big storm cloud was building off the coast. It dropped two tornado type funnels, like long black hoses. It was well off shore but caught the attention of everyone on the beach and even made the evening news on Jacksonville TV. You might be able to see it in the following photo. It got much closer, but we were driving away . . . fast.

On the way to the beach, we stopped at the St. Augustine Lighthouse (1874) and climbed the 219 steps to the top. Great views from up there.

We ended our stay in St. Augustine with a relaxing Memorial Day jazz concert in the plaza. The "Plaza de la Constitucion" was the first public space in the country. It's design was laid out in a 1573 Spanish ordinance that required "a prolonged square, the length equal to one and one-half times the width." The square was intended to be the center of the community with only businesses and churches facing it. Today it's still a beautiful plaza and the center of community activities. We had a great time in St. Augustine and recommend it highly as a vacation destination.

17. Stennis and Kennedy Space Centers

While visiting Mississippi in April, we stumbled across the John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis. We had never heard of it, so we looked into it and took the free tour of the facility. It was very interesting.

The Stennis complex was established in 1963. This is where NASA tests the large rockets that carry things into space and send astronauts to the moon and the space station. All the space shuttle engines are tested here before the launches. Because of the noise involved in testing, a huge amount of land was acquired and cleared of human habitation. A small town or two had to be relocated outside the noise buffer area.

As you might imagine, rocket engines are very loud and powerful. They burn a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen at a temperature of about 6000 degrees. The three Space Shuttle main engines develop just over 37 million horsepower. One engine weighs one-seventh as much as a locomotive engine but delivers as much horsepower as 28 locomotives. It also has a high-pressure oxidizer pump that delivers the equivalent horsepower of 11 more. We got to see some of the test facilities, which look much like regular launch pads, but without the full rocket apparatus. There's lots of noise but nothing shoots into the sky (hopefully).

Lots of people work here. More than 30 other agencies conduct business at Stennis and the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command operates a world class oceanographic and meteorological center here. It was surprising to learn that more oceanographers work at Stennis than any other place in the world.

The Stennis facility has an impressive visitor center. We could walk through a mock-up of the International Space Station, get a close look at a Space Shuttle Main Engine and much more. As you can see, Bonnie took the controls of a Space Shuttle mock-up. It’s also a great place for kids to learn about space travel. School bus loads of kids arrive every day for tours.

After our eye-opening visit to the Stennis facility in Mississippi, we looked forward to a stop at Cape Canaveral in Florida to see the Kennedy Space Center where the rocket engines are put into action. Again, we were not disappointed. It was even bigger and better.

We got an early start and arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in time for the 10 am 2-hour bus tour of the site. We couldn't help but feel the history and importance of this place. This is where, on May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space and where John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth a year later. It took him only about five hours to go around three times. All NASA human space missions and Space Shuttle missions have lifted off from here, including those that failed. The following photo is launch pad 39-B where the Space Shuttle is launched. It's much larger than it appears on TV.

The two wide paths leading up to the launch pad are gravel tracks for the huge "crawler", which is a very heavy tracked vehicle. It's job is to move the rocket, in its upright position, from the assembly building to the launch pad. It moves very slowly and burns a gallon of diesel fuel every 42 feet. And we thought our RV was getting bad mileage!!! Next shuttle launch is on May 31.

We had hoped to see a launch pad and some buildings, but were blown away by the tour and the visitor center presentations. The space center is a huge sprawling complex of 140,000 acres of land, swamp, Atlantic beaches and waterways. It has two launch pads, one of the world’s longest runways (for shuttle landings), and the rocket assembly building (below) is the third largest building in the U.S. About 16,000 people work at the space center and, judging by the cars in the employee parking lots, they're paid very well.

The facility isn’t quite like Disneyland, but it does have a “Shuttle Launch Experience” ride that provides the feelings, sounds and experience of being launched (we didn’t do that one). The visitor’s center also includes museums, two IMAX theaters, a rocket garden (photo), lots of displays and hands-on things for kids and adults, restaurants and, of course, gift shops.

One of the most popular exhibits was a huge Saturn V rocket. That’s the one that sent 27 astronauts to the moon, including the first humans to land on the moon . . . Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin in 1969. The rocket is enormous. It’s 363 feet long and, when loaded, weighs as much as seven Boeing 747s. It’s hard to visualize how something that big could get off the ground. The earlier visit to the Stennis facility helped us comprehend the power of the engines.

We were surprised that such an intense, loud and dangerous facility was so closely integrated with the natural environment. But the center shares its property with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and nearly half of the Center is within the nationally designated Canaveral National Seashore. Throughout the base we saw heron, ibis and other birds, alligators, wild pigs and bald eagles. The tour guide pointed out a very large eagle’s nest that has been high in a big tree near the main road for 40 years. Even though a shuttle launch could blow the feathers off a duck a mile away, it seems that most wildlife survive and aren’t adversely affected by the occasional loud noise. Most of the time the area is very quiet, public access is restricted and most work is done indoors. It’s an amazing facility and a great place to spend a day.

The NASA space program has a very respectable safety record, but accidents have happened and lives have been lost over the years. It was good to see that the astronauts that lost their lives to fires, shuttle disasters and other mishaps were honored in a special memorial to their service.