Stats for May 7, 2019

Origin: Cumberland Island Anchorage

Stopover: Red Bird Creek Anchorage

Distance: 104 miles

Speed: 8 mph

Time on the Move: 12 hours and 58 minutes

May 8, 2019

Destination: Savannah-Thunderbolt Marine

Distance: 23.6 miles

Speed: 7.7 mph

Time on the Move: 3 hours and 3 minutes

So we have a new phenomenon with our traveling. Some of the “destinations” we are trying to get to are too far for us to reach in 1 day (or in the time we have available in 1 day). So, we get as close as we can for the day, spend the night anchored out or on a free wall, and then move on to the place we really wanted to get to the next day. I didn’t quite know how to enter those stops because quite honestly, a lot of them are boring. We usually can’t get off the boat and there really isn’t much to report besides “we traveled for 13 hours today, the kids did school, and were either best friends or worst enemies.” So, I guess I’ll try grouping these travels like I did above, with the idea that we had a “stopover” on the way to our actual destination. This blogging thing is difficult for a type A person like myself!!

The morning we left Cumberland Island was so calm and still, it was amazing. We haven’t seen calm water like this since we were in the Bahamas. We left extra early, but Colin woke up just in time to see some dolphins come play at our bow.

Within the first short stretch of the day we passed by the Naval Sumbmarine Base in Kings Bay. It is the home port of the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet of ballistic missile nuclear submarines. I googled it and that basically means submarines that shoot missiles and are nuclear powered. We have heard that loopers sometimes see submarines in this area, which have tug boats escorting them (and keeping the crazy boaters away). I was really hoping we’d see a sub, but we didn’t. However, if you look at the google map satellite view of the area, there happen to be 2 subs in the area when they took the satellite image.

After that, the rest of our day looked a lot like this:

And this:

With a little bit of this:

And finally this:

We chose to have an extra long first day so that we could get in to Savannah earlier in the day. Plus, if we are just staying at anchor, we usually don’t feel a need to get there early unless we know there is a way to get off the boat. Your average anchorage is not a place you’re going ashore, but that is especially true here where the “lowcountry” is pretty much all marsh, depending on the state of the tide.

The next morning, we finished out our last 20 some miles of the trip early so that we could go exploring. After docking and a quick lunch, we called an uber and were on our way to the city.

Can you imagine being a tourist in so many different southern towns, with GENERALLY the same things to see and do in each town?? While we were excited to be in Savannah, we were not excited about paying for 5 people to join a tour where we would pay out our ears to hear about the history of the city. So we decided to grab the hop on, hop off trolley MAP and do our own little walking tour through the city. That is what I call a cheap way to learn about a place. (In hindsight, I wish we would have paid for the tour, I wish we would have rented a car, and I wish we would have stayed another day in Savannah.)

We visited the Owens-Thomas House and learned a bit about the life of this prominent family from the mid 1800’s. No expense was spared when building this house, so it has all the bells and whistles of a home from this time period.

The carriage house was also the slave quarters where between 10-20 slaves slept. We heard a story about the slave who was a nanny to the Owens-Thomas children and how she had to sleep in the main house with the Owens-Thomas children, on call 24 hours a day, and she couldn’t sleep in the slave quarters with her own daughter. The other slaves looked after her daughter whenever she was with the Owens-Thomas children (which seems like pretty often). This seemed to sink in a bit with our kids and help them begin to understand how sad it is that the slaves weren’t free to make their own decisions.

After touring the Owens-Thomas home we walked over to the Colonial Park Cemetery. This cemetery was opened in 1750 and full by 1853. It only has a few hundred gravestones, but it is said that over 10,000 people are actually buried here, some in mass graves. I’ve read that it is quite haunted, but it was a beautiful place for a walk, and interesting to read about the people here. Many of the markers were so old, you could not read the inscriptions. I find it interesting that quite often the years, months, and days old the person was when they died is listed. There is a playground in one corner of the cemetery which Mike and I thought was creepy, but the kids didn’t seem to mind one bit (A playground in a cemetery probably beats just walking around a cemetery!).

Next we headed down to the riverwalk where we walked on old cobblestone streets and passed by many shops and restaurants. Do you know how hard it is to keep our kids out of every souvenir shop they walk by?! We’ve stopped going in shops because we know they will beg for everything. It makes me miss the Bahamas where there was nothing to buy, anywhere!!

The next morning, we needed to go to Target. Yes Target. We hadn’t been to Target since returning from the Bahamas and it was on Hayley’s list of must-dos when we got back to the US. No, really we needed new shoes for growing feet. Tobin’s second toenails have turned grey and started falling off, and we think it is from the way-to-small shoes he wore when he flew back to Michigan a few weeks ago. Regardless, we borrowed the courtesy car from the marina for a few hours and headed out.

Let me tell you, shopping at Target is not as much fun anymore. The kids just want everything and I can’t even look at what I want because it will be too hard not to buy it. So, we wandered from shoes to underwear to groceries to toiletries and got out of there!!

We figured we’d head to a playground to help the kids get some energy out before heading on our way. We drove to Forsyth Park which is a huge, beautiful park in Savannah with fountains, moss covered oak trees, playgrounds, and walking paths galore. We could have stayed for hours but we only had about 20 minutes. This is when we realized we really should have planned on staying 2 days.

A quick stop at Little Caesar’s Pizza (also on the list of must-dos when back in the US) and we were out of there. We will have to put Savannah near the top of the list of places to return someday. What a beautiful city!!

Thank you for reading and following along on our adventures!!