May 19 – “Day sixteen: Attack of the Rabid Mayflies”

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.