Savannah, Georgia, Day One

After a day catching up on cleaning and errands (what, again?), we left St Augustine, Florida and headed north one hundred fifty four miles on I-95 to Savannah, Georgia.

This city has always beckoned to us, via friends recommendations and Southern Mystique. After all this time, Here We Are!

We completed our setup about 3:30 and decided to cruise into town. Turns out we're a little farther away from Savannah than we anticipated. We are staying in a KOA in Richmond Hill, GA, about twenty five miles southwest of Savannah on US Hwy 17, just off I-95, in site 27. This is a typical KOA, dated and compact. It's set in a forest of pine trees which make navigation a chore, and the sites are awkward and the turns tight, but overall the park is very pretty. The trees provide some shade (it was 95 today, with a heat index of 106!) and even though the satellite reception is spotty, the trees are welcome!

In any case, we drove north a bit on I-95 to I-16, and then east into Savannah. This led us directly to the Savannah Visitor's Center on ML King, jr, Blvd, where we loaded up on brochures and maps.

MLK Blvd took us to the Savannah River, and River Street, which parallels the river. This area was the shipping and receiving center of the city back in the day, and the buildings housed warehouses and offices of the "factors" who oversaw all of the trade in the city. Now restaurants occupy the lower floors and upscale apartments are on the upper floors.

We crisscrossed the mile square "historic district", vowing to return with information on what we were seeing. We found numerous small parks dotted across the district, providing instant relief from the heat, as well as the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, one of the tallest landmarks in the historic district.

We intended to make a large loop through the city of Savannah, but got lost somewhere in downtown.  That seems to happen a lot, but usually with a beneficial result since we find things that aren't on the tour guides! This particular side trip took us into the city's residential districts.

These well kept homes invited us to slowly drive down tree shaded boulevards and enjoy their beauty.

Another wrong turn took us into an older section of the city.

A revolutionary notion suddenly occurred to us: try reading a map! Our GPS had been yelling at us for sometime, but we had ignored it, thinking that it was incorrect. Well, I've gotta admit, the old paper map in the glove box got us out of Savannah in short order! Lesson learned!

Perhaps we'll get lost again tomorrow and discover some little-known section of Savannah!