Ahhh.....Savannah!

The oaks are huge, dripping with Spanish moss, and tossing the odd acorn on the roof of the van. The campsite is clean. We have a full hook up complete with cable TV and WiFi. I just came back from walk to the “river”, more a swamp than river. It has trees growing in the water along the banks, water lilies and old branches rot among the tree roots. I think it looks romantically southern. I thought it would be a great place for Dave and Shirley to paddle their canoe. And then I see it - a computer generated sign: No Swimming – Alligator. Yikes!

I walked out to the end of the pier and spoke to a young couple who were fishing there. I asked them if there really was an alligator around. “Oh, yes,” the young woman told me. “You can see them in the distance sometimes and you can hear them splashing at night.”

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Where have we been since the last blog? Well, first we toured the Biltmore House built by George Vanderbilt between 1895 and 1901. Six years to build a stone castle in the glorious hills. Sandra managed to charm free tickets from our next door neighbours in the campground. (She admired and praised their new pup.) Our neighbours had bought two-day tickets and gave us their second day. At $47.00 per ticket, it was much appreciated. Check out Biltmore House at out at www.biltmore.com.

We stayed so long at Biltmore House that we decided to spend a second night in Asheville. So we began the search for a new campground just as it was turning dark. We picked one from the AAA book and headed out. After a long drive through what started to look like Deliverance country, we pulled up in front of a largely deserted, run down site – and decided to heed those spider senses and keep on going. We finally found a good site close to where we had started and spent the night.

On Friday, we began the drive to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We programmed a campground into Bossy and took off. We arrived around 4 pm at a lovely campground and got a site at the beach. The beach was many miles of white sand and had the longest pier (1200 plus feet) on the east coast. The waves were crashing on the shore and I waded into the warm ocean almost to my waist! It’s great to reach the stage where you don’t care if people think you’re crazy!
We had supper and headed for the discount stores, finally falling into our beds after a stop at the pizza place.

The next day it was raining but we drove from our campsite in north Myrtle Beach to regular Myrtle Beach – and more shopping. We headed back to the campground for “Pig Pickin’” at noon – the annual buffet hosted by the campground. Then it was back to shopping. By 4 pm I had shopped ‘till I dropped and retired to the van to have tea and read my book. Sandra did her best to deplete the inventory in all 200 outlet stores in the Tanger Mall. Ahhh, the joys of having your “house” with you in the parking lot.

So brings us to today. We left Myrtle Beach and drove to Savannah, stopping at a couple of old historic plantations along the way.

We also had an “ice cream emergency” which was only heightened by the fact that we had eaten the last of our “emergency chocolate” the day before. After three stops we finally found some ice cream sandwiches in a small general store that had bait in the first two freezers that Sandra checked. It was just one of those days.

So tomorrow we will head into Savannah to check out this great city. Life is good.