Savannah, Georgia

Drove from New Orleans to Georgia in a single day on our way to Savannah. Probably our longest driving day yet, about 600 miles! Whew! We were rewarded with barbecue.

On our way to Savannah, we went to Okefenokee National Wildlife Preserve. Unfortunately, it was raining but that didn’t stop us from hiking the boardwalk trail out to a viewing tower.

We were immediately spellbound by Savannah. It’s small enough to get around downtown on foot, there are small block-sized parks sprinkled throughout the city, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s both comforting and elegant everywhere you look with massive Live Oaks covered in Spanish Moss. Forsythe Park is particularly idyllic.

We wanted to go to the Jepson Center modern art museum and then discovered the tickets were also good to the Telfair Academy and Owens-Thomas house. We ended up seeing all three and we’re really glad we did. The academy had a lot of impressionist paintings, the Jepson Center had an entertaining technology section, and the Owens-Thomas house tour was really interesting. The Owens-Thomas slave quarters have the largest area of haint blue paint that was meant to keep out ghosts. The mansion house was also the first in Georgia (and possibly the US) to have running water in the house.

It was rainy for much of our time in Savannah, so we drove out to the beach… because that makes sense on a rainy day. We also walked the River Walk, saw the Forsyth Park farmer’s market and drove out to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge has a couple short hikes through the old rice fields that are now managed wetlands for overwintering waterfowl. There were tons of heron, egrets, coots and other birds we didn’t recognize. We even managed to capture a glimpse of a few alligators!
At one point, we spotted a hawk or eagle that had caught a duck. As we watched, a bald eagle swooped in and scared the hawk off of his meal. The hawk dropped the duck into the water and the eagle grabbed it and flew off. Crazy!