Savannah, GA to Charleston, SC...gorgeous and historic

Map of Savannah

On Monday, we left the cold climes and terrible winds of Jacksonville toward Savannah, Georgia. The weather in Savannah proved to be everything Jacksonville's was not...warm and sunny, ideal for walking around town. We set up the RV at Skidaway Island State Park...possibly one of the prettiest parks we have stayed in since July. The park has really tall oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from them and the trees form a beautiful canopy over the roads throughout. With the bright blue cloudless sky and the fall colors, what a scene we saw. No pictures, though.

We ventured into Savannah to see the sights and discovered the pleasant river walk and a series of placards about the city's history. We saw a crowd listening to a street-performing trumpeter, who was briefly and amusingly distracted with a bridal party walking by and so broke into 'Here Comes the Bride'. He followed it up with a burlesque theme as the last two bridesmaids walked by...they didn't seem nearly as amused as the crowd was. Very funny.

We also found The Peacemaker, an old wooden schooner (tall ship), docked in the Savannah River offering free tours of its decks and planks. It was fascinating to walk all over the ship and see the city from the pretty boat.

We walked to two of the historic squares, Oglethorpe and Wright. The city's founder, James Oglethorpe, laid out a plan for the city in 1733 for neighborhoods to surround each of 24 squares. Today, 22 of the original 24 squares remain and each is a little park with houses, businesses and churches around them. Very quaint.

We headed back to East River Street for some brews at The Warehouse, a little dive bar filled with locals and tourists alike. Then we grabbed a burger at Five Guys, yummy and greasy.

USS Yorktown

On Tuesday, we packed up and headed to Charleston, South Carolina, home of Fort Sumter, the site of the beginning of the Civil War. We camped at Givhans Ferry State Park, then drove almost 40 miles (!) into Charleston to tour some of the historic district. We walked around the historic Charleston City Market, ate dinner at Southend Brewery and Smokehouse, then walked along the battery between the Cooper River and the beautiful homes along East Bay Street. What a gorgeous city.

Heading back to Charleston

On Wednesday morning, we raced down to Charleston early to catch the ferry boat to Fort Sumter, but we were 1 minute late, so instead, we walked around south of Broad along several streets lined with interesting architecture, colorful houses and little hidden gardens. We had lunch at a sushi place, then drove over to Mount Pleasant to catch the 1:30pm ferry to Fort Sumter from Patriots Point, a port on the Charleston Harbor featuring the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier.

The tour of Fort Sumter was fantastic. The ferry boat ride through Charleston Harbor took us past Castle Pinckney, a little wart of land sticking up out of the middle of the harbor with a "castle" (now just large weeds encircled by a short block wall). 

At Fort Sumter

We also rode past Fort Johnson, from where the opening shot of the Civil War was shot, and Fort Moultrie, where Maj. Gen. Anderson was originally posted before stealing off to Fort Sumter by cover of darkeness, a position he considered much more defensible. That move was seen by the South as an act of war and thus the shot from Fort Johnson followed not much later. Maj. Gen. Anderson and his small force held the fort until April 11, 1861, when he was asked to surrender the fort, which he refused. At 4:30am on April 12, Confederate forces began firing on the fort. Anderson surrendered the fort to the Confederacy after 34 straight hours of bombardment.

Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter is an impressive structure whose walls were once over 50 feet high, but after all the shelling by Union forces over the 4 years of the Civil War, the structure is now barely half its original height. In 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American war, the Battery Huger (a large concrete structure) was built in the center of the Fort's walls though it never saw any action.
While at the fort, we saw a bunch of dolphins playing in the surf off the left face of the fort. There were at least four of them horsing around, jumping in the water...so cute!