A very good day.

Frank: Oh Boy! Did ever a day go so right? It was great! We did everything we had planned.

We arrived at the Savannah Historic District at about 9AM, got our free parking ticket, and jumped on the trolley. We went to stop number two, jumped off the trolley and walked down the very steep steps to the Cobblestone Café on the west end of River Street. We had a great breakfast, (good food, nice people) and then walked the length of River Street to get a photo of the statue of Florence Martus, “The Waving Girl.” It commemorates a lady who as a young woman fell in love with (was seduced by) a sailor who promised her that he would return. For some reason (silly girl) she believed him (cue record “Delta Dawn”) and waived her scarf to every ship that came into harbor for the rest of her life. They say she died of a broken heart and a very sore arm.

We checked the map and decided to simply walk up the very steep steps to the Pirate House and then onto the Cathedral, Mercer House, and the Forsyth Fountain. And so we did, and all three were worth the effort. The Cathedral is beyond belief, the Mercer House is just as it was in the movie, and the fountain is similarly beautiful and just as depicted. Cheryl even walked around the side of the Mercer House and found the gray house with the balcony where the lady greeted John Kelso and took him to his room. OK, so we are silly, but we’ve seen Mercer House, the beach house from the movie “Beaches” and the drugstore from the movie “Murphy’s Romance”, and such small pleasures make our small minds happy. So there!

Oh, here’s an interesting aside. While walking up to the cathedral I saw some bills lying in the street behind a white van. There were two tens, and a single. Twenty-one dollars. The van was a “work van” with two doors in the back and the bills were lying below the doors, so I figured the owner dropped the bills when he took out some tools or materials. I had no idea where he was so I folded the bills and stuck them under the van’s windshield wiper. If the bills belonged to the driver he has an interesting story to tell about lost and found money. If the bills weren’t his he has a heck of a story of finding $21.00 on his windshield.

The above took us to about 2 o’clock so we retrieved the truck and drove the 30 minutes over to Tybee Beach. Wow! First of all let me say I’m not a “beach person”, but if I was a beach person this is the beach I’d go to. It is beautiful, HUGE, easy to get to and friendly, except for the parking meters. I never did figure out how to work the parking meters. I was struggling with the instructions when a sweet little old lady came up to me and offered me her parking slip as it still had an hour and a half on it. Later at lunch I said to Cheryl, “I sure hate being so old that I can’t figure out how to operate a parking meter.” She replied, “But wasn’t it nice of that lady to give you her parking slip.” I thought about it and said, “Yes, but I sure hate being so old I have to be helped by a little old lady.” Getting old sucks, but it truly does beat the alternative.
Cheryl has been toying with the idea of putting together a “Girls Only” trip to Savannah for all the wives of the Del Monte clan and some of her girlfriends. Our trip to Tybee Beach has her thinking that maybe staying at the beach and going into Savannah a couple of days might be a neat idea. She’s mulling it over. Of course she hasn’t seen Hilton Head yet and that might even get into the algorithm when she gets farther along in her planning.

Tomorrow we are leaving Red Gate and driving over to Hilton Head to stay two days in a very POSH (Port Out, Starboard Home) RV Camp on the island. We decided to stay a couple more days so we can arrive in Birmingham, Alabama on the following Sunday evening and spend Monday and Tuesday seeing the Barber Motorsports Museum and our friends Brian & Diane.

That’s our day!
Love,
The beach bums.