Savannah Georgia, Beaufort, South Carolina

Here we are again, heading north and hopefully following the warm weather.  So far, so good.  After we left St. Augustine we headed north toward Savannah, Georgia.  The waterway and the scenery changed dramatically again.  We are now traveling through a waterway that has marshlands on both sides.  It twists and turns and if you look at the picture below you will see as we turn the sailboat ahead of us looks like he is stuck in the weeds.  He really is traveling up the same waterway we are on.

This is the waterway and if you look really carefully you can see the red marker way off in the distance.  These are very important to a boater as they tell you where the deeper water in the channel is located.

We anchored down river from Savannah as the Savannah River has a lot of high tides ( 9 feet) and strong currents.  We were watching the weather as we always do and a weather front was approaching so we wanted to be in more protected waters.  The storm passed north of our anchorage and these are two photos of the storm clouds we saw.

It was fascinating to watch the clouds lite up for an hour or more and later that evening (about 1 a.m.) we too got rain, but luckily no wind.  It can be a little unsettling with the wind gusting high when you are anchored.

The next stretch of water showed that there were several inlets that lead to the ocean and we started to see shrimp boats and more of the oystering boats that we had seen on the gulf side of Florida.

As we entered the Savannah River we followed a tour boat that provides day trips to the tourist to see the river.  The white boat is the tour boat which is quite big compared to our boat.  Well take a look at the cargo ships!  They were huge compared to the tour boat and we are the peanut boat.

From outside our door at the dock in Savannah

There is a city dock at Savannah which is located right in the heart of downtown.  We stayed there and thoroughly enjoyed watching all the activity at the waterfront and we also did a walking tour of the downtown historic district and took a lovely horse drawn carriage ride.  It was delightful.  We enjoyed some of the local specialties at the restaurants including chowder, crab cakes, and the most delicious eggs benedict.  We loved the entire experience.

Here are some pictures of the many parks that make up the city.  Oglethorphe was the settler that designed the city.  There are now 24 squares that make up the town.  They are lovely parks which usually have azalea bushes.  Because the weather here has been ahead of schedule, like most of the US.  the bushes were already done blooming.  The parks however were still beautiful.

We are in the photo here getting ready to take the carriage ride.

After the carriage ride we spent the a day checking out the entire historic district.  The streets go down to the riverfront.  Here are a couple of pictures of what those cobblestone streets look like.

We visited one of the cemeteries in town, this one had over 700 people who had died during the Great Yellow Fever epidemic in 1820.  Here are some photos of the grounds.

We also saw the Cathedral St. John the Baptist which is a catholic church in Savannah.  It was founded in 1850.  Amazing

This is a picture of a garden of a local resident.  The gardens were always enclosed so that the lady of the house could work in the garden and hike up her skirt without a man seeing her ankles.  If per chance, a gentleman passing had seen her ankles, then he would have to dual with her brother or father.  Not that long ago.

After thoroughly enjoying Savannah we were not disappointed when we arrived in Beaufort, S.C.  We did a walking tour of the city and these are some of the historic sites we saw there.

This is the visitor center which was an arsenal in 1798

Here are some of the historic homes.

We also saw a couple of the churches at Beaufort.

The is the Baptist Church of Beaufort

We toured the St. Helena's Church which was began in 1742.  They will be celebrating their 300 anniversary this year.  

I think what surprised us the most was the giant trees on the streets at Beaufort.  Here is a picture of Erwin standing at the base of one of those giant trees.