Well, our first attempt at tourism was to c heck out Old Downtown Savannah. There were indeed a lot of old things down there. But it is just a somewhat typical fairly large city downtown. Tall buildings for Superman to leap over when he isn’t playing Clark Kent. Much hustle and bustle. We finally located a trolley tour guide to ask where to park so we could go to the visitor center. He informed us that the visitor center was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Of course it was. He offered to give us free parking if we just took his $30 tour. We decided to just drive around town. It had its moments. Intermittent city parks. Homes like you see on TV where you share a wall with your neighbor. No idea where you park your car. They did have a very cool cathedral and some nice architecture on several other churches and, well … big buildings. We just drove around and passed on the museums.
Check
off Savannah. Next we went back to fort
hunting. We headed back down south a
ways to Fort King George, one we missed on the way up. It wasn’t that far from Savannah. The fort was actually a reconstruction. It was on the site of the original, but that
one is gone. It actually caught fire and
none of the soldiers stationed there particularly cared about putting it
out. They were sick of being there, and
hoped this would get them back to England.
Sin e the construction was modern, we got to crawl around and on and in
all the buildings. That was
fascinating. Our bug mistake, however (That’s
NOT a typo), came when we went on the nature walk. We were absolutely inundated by The Attack of
the Rabid Mayflies and their sidekicks … The Mangy Mosquitoes. The evil creatures were everywhere, including
my mouth and ears and hair and legs and eyes.
As a result of the attack we renamed the fort. No longer will it be known as Fort King
George of the British. From now and
henceforth forevermore it shall be known as Fort Mad Mayfly of the Bugs.
Once
we escaped from the bug onslaught, we tried to sample the local lunch cuisine at
the Purple Pickle. Great name. not so great a restaurant. It closed down several years ago and they
forgot to tell the tourist bureau. Sad,
but down the road we found a Cracker Barrel.
May as well play it safe. While
there we formulated a new game plan. Off
the books again. Chris remembered
reading about a glass bottom boat ride … somewhere. She looked it up, and on the spur of the moment
we decided. Back to Florida. And not just across the border. Oh, no.
We headed deep into the heart of the Ocala National Forest. Actually we went to the Silver Springs State
Park, which is on the outskirts of Ocala.
That
decision was my cue to find us a hotel for the night somewhere nearby. On a hunch I went to our Choice Hotels app
and typed in a search for hotels in the area that would accept our accumulated
points in lieu of money for a room. Thus
far every time we have tried that, the request has been denied – no rooms
available – so our hopes weren’t high.
But lo and behold, a room popped up.
We grabbed it and headed off to the central swamplands to find us a
glass-bottomed boat.
After
a brief practical joke by Apple Siri that threatened to get us lost in the
middle of the Ocala National Forest, we arighted our ship and made our way to
Silver Springs State Park for a ride on their glass-bottomed boat. On the way in a guy admired mt World Series
shirt … until he found out I was an Astros fan.
He was from Baltimore. Not an
Astros fan.
The
boat ride was a pleasant surprise. Worth
the two hour detour, actually. We saw
numerous hot springs bubbling that have joined forces to form a lake/river that
eventually flows into the Atlantic through Jacksonville. Through the glass bottom we saw turtles and
tilapia and catfish and some miscellaneous bait. We also saw under water a 500 year old Indian
canoe, one of the original glass bottomed boats from the turn of the century. It was sunk for use in a Doris Day
movie. We also saw three statues of
Greek gods. They starred in one of the
James Bond movies, Moonraker. The one
with the anaconda fight. Actually, they
shipped the snake here in an 89 degree crate.
When they put him in the 79 degree water he was lethargic at best. Needless to say, the movie fight scene was …
fake. As a bonus we saw an alligator
sunning on a log. The captain saw my GFD
hat and proceeded to regale us with his recent adventure delivering a boat to
Moody Gardens through all the recent bad weather. Fourteen days at sea in terrible
weather. Nope. There were also supposed to be monkeys living
wild in the trees. We didn’t see
any. We did see a monster-sized woodpecker
though. He knocked down a hunk of tree
right where we had been standing. That’s
one way to get us out of his jungle.
The
free hotel was just about 20 minutes away, so we made it in plenty of time to
walk over to IHOP for a quick supper. The
waitress chatted with us and the guy at the next table for a good fifteen
minutes. We know a lot of her life story
now. Very sweet lady. Well … tomorrow we start our westward
trek. Onward.
1
Peter 3:12 says, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears
are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do
evil.”
Father,
would you watch over that lady at IHOP. Take
care of her family and give her peace of mind.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment