Liz and I decided to travel to Savannah, GA for our Spring Break Get-Away this year. I booked a room at the Rodeway Inn on Tybee Island a couple weeks before we departed. I did this through Priceline after using Kayak.com to search for deals. The room was $49.99 per night and I was pleased with this rate. About a week after making the reservation, I began to look at some of the reviews of this motel. They were abominable!! One person said, "Sleep on the beach if you have to but don't stay here." I began investigating other options. The hotels in the Historical District were all over a hundred bucks per night and the other low-cost options were out near the airport. Tybee Island is right on the Atlantic coast and the beach is just one block away from the Rodeway. I decided to stick with it and move if it was intolerable.
We got off on Saturday at about 8 a.m. and got through Chicago without too much of a delay. We stopped in Lebanon, Indiana for lunch at Denny's and fuel and then headed down the road. Things got a little dicey as we hit Nashville, TN just about when it was time to get off the road and find a motel. We headed down the Interstate and pulled off in Murfreesboro, TN to what seemed a motel heaven. There were a good half-dozen motels right along the freeway and we figured it would be a cinch to find a cheap place to stay. WRONG! The first place had a sign on the door that said "No Vacancy" and so did the second. I was just about to get back on the freeway when I decided to try the Day's Inn for a last shot. They had a room for $80 which we took. It was dark already and we were both tired. It turns out that the HORSE SHOW was in town and there were people from all over the country in attendance. We went to the Crackerbarrel restaurant and waited for about a half hour to get seated but it was worth the wait.
Sunday promised to be an exciting day of travel since most of the first day's travel is flat, flat, flat. I managed to use the B setting on the tranny of my Prius when we went down the first big mountain descent. The squirrels under the hood screamed but it did what it was supposed to do. It used the motor to slow the car down so I didn't have to sit on the brakes. Hearing about yet another inexplicable acceleration incident with a 2008 Prius on the news that morning didn't help my confidence but the odds of it happening to a given person are so slim that I took heart.
We stopped at a McDonalds in Forsyth, GA for lunch after having navigated past Atlanta. I like to stick with rural stops for motels and restaurants and this was a little more urban than I was comfortable with but sometimes you just don't have that choice not knowing what's just down the road.
We arrived at our destination of Tybee Island, GA in late afternoon. When I went into the motel office, I was immediately assailed with an odor that I associate with unfamiliar cooking. There was a bell on the top of the counter of the kind that has a little button that you push to make it ring. This bell, composed completely of metal, was covered entirely with rust. This was not a good sign. An old dark-skinned India gentleman came out. English was definitely not his first language. I ended up giving him the Priceline hotel info and he checked us in. We got the key cards and headed for our room. The door, a large metal one, had numerous places where the paint was scratched off. We walked in and the room smelled clean but the whole impression was of a motel that was very old and had not been maintained. The TV, a 27" CRT had a red tinge to its picture. I didn't even try to adjust it out as I figured this was a symptom of a failing, overused tube which probably could not be configured out. There was no internet of any kind provided at all. The light in the bathroom was a bare energy-efficient bulb. When we tried the shower, the water was warm at best. The coffee pot worked and the king-size bed was comfortable and clean. They didn't come in to clean the room on Monday and when I asked about towels, the younger India gentleman (also quite old) told me that if we brought in our dirty towels he'd give us fresh ones. They did come in and provide fresh towels and a new coffee packet on Tuesday so apparently they only do that every other day. When we came back to the motel on Tuesday, our key cards would not work. We went to the office and the younger India gentleman said he wanted to give us some bananas. He gave me this old laminated newspaper article about him and his commitment to healthy eating. He eats no meat, drinks no water and only eats vegetables. We accepted the bananas which were very good but I can't help but think that he de-activated our key cards just to get us to come in.
Monday morning we went to breakfast at the Sugar Shack. We had located it via the large armfull of brochures we had picked up on the motel office upon our arrival. At the Sugar Shack, we were greeted by an old woman whose white hair was matted and unattractive. She explained that we could order at the counter and she would bring it out to us. The place had paint peeling off the walls. We didn't go back there for breakfast.
After breakfast we headed in to Savannah. It's about a 15 mile trip through salt marsh and creeks. We decided to take some walking tours the first of which started at 10 a.m. and was called Savannah Stroll. A lanky man in a slouch hat and carrying a wooden walking stick named Bill led this tour. We learned that he had been doing these tours for THE PAST 37 YEARS! He told us about the orderly way that Savannah was laid out with a series of open squares. There are 22 of the original 24 squares still in existence and plans to revert back to the last two as well.
In the afternoon, following lunch at a place called Leopolds (which Bill recommended), we took the Civil War walking tour with Rob. He took us down to River street where the cotton used to be sold. It is quite well restored to the way it was before the Civil War and it was fascinating to behold. When we had lunch, we learned that there were going to be a HALF MILLION people in town for St. Patrick's day. Apparently River Street in Savannah over St. Pats day is like Bourbon Street in New Orleans over Mardi Gras.
Sunday night we dined at Sting Rays, a seafood restaurant just a few blocks down from our motel. We sat in a "porch" that was crudely tacked on to the front of the building and dined at a table that was made of plywood and looked like something I could make. I had the Low Country boil which featured that largest shrimp I have ever had to peel and what most likely was Hilshire Farm sausage. I was hoping for some kind of locally-made sausage. The shrimp was awesome and the boiled red potatoes were also very tasty.
Monday we dined at The Crab Shack. We had to drive down a long narrow lane to get to the place and it was as much an attraction as a restaurant. They had a pool with young alligators out front and a very extensive arrangement of open air seating. We ate inside and it was an experience. The tables were also made of plywood but there was a 12 inch hole cut in the middle of the table with a square platform above the hole. We ordered the Crab Shack special platter for two and they placed this huge platter containing boiled shrimp, snow crab legs, crawfish, stone crab claws and mussels as well as the apparently obligatory Hillshire Farm sausage, boiled red potatoes and corn on the cob. We cracked and shucked and chowed down frequently tearing off paper towels from the roll provided. We did some serious damage to the platter except for the sausage and potatoes. All the crab and shrimp and crawfish were consumed and we left very satisfied.
Tuesday, we decided to take a trolley tour and a river cruise. We had breakfast at the Sunrise Restaurant down near Sting Ray's and the blueberry pancakes were a big improvement over the Sugar Shack. After driving to Savannah and parking in a lot recommended by Bill, we bought tickets for the 10 a.m. Trolley tour on Oglethorp Trolleys and the 2 p.m. river cruise on the Georgia Queen. The trolley tour was very enjoyable as we were able to cover much more ground than we had on the walking tours and the narrator, a Savannah native and a firefighter, was excellent. I had a Reuben sandwich at a little bar/restaurant on River Street. The waitress had recently moved to Savannah from New Jersey and was "deer in the headlights" about the prospect of all the people likely to be there on St. Patrick's Day.
The cruise on the Georgia Queen, a large boat with a likely fake paddlewheel on the back, was pretty much of a bore except for the huge container ship that passed us on the Savannah River. I find those things fascinating mostly because of their huge size and majesty. We sat with a recently retired 3rd grade teacher from Niagara Falls, Canada and her husband. They commented on the health care situation in Canada after I asked them about it. They said there were some long waits for non-critical things but that generally they felt the system works well. They were skeptical about the US's ability to pass significant health care legislation feeling it was "too late in the game" for it to happen.
Tuesday night, we dined at Uncle Bubba's, a restaurant nearer to Savannah that we had seen on the drive to Tybee. I had fried seafood for the first time on this trip. The scallops were huge and tasty and the Catch of the Day fish was so-so. Uncle Bubba's is located along a creek and the view would have been better had they been willing to raise the blinds but the blinds were old and they were unwilling to mess with them.
After another breakfast of Blueberry Pancakes at the Sunrise Restaurant, we departed Wednesday morning for Fort Pulaski. This fort is located about half way between Tybee Island and Savannah. We tromped around the fort on yet another beautiful sunny day (we were very blessed with great weather all week) learning that the Confederacy claimed the fort by walking in and taking over just after Georgia had seceded. There were only one officer and a caretaker manning this Federal fort at the time. The Union army then won the fort using rifled cannon from secret emplacements on Tybee Island after the Confederacy foolishly decided not to defend it. We didn't eat any lunch on Wednesday. When we left the fort, we decided to explore Cockspur Island and happened to see a container ship go by on the Savannah River.
Wednesday afternoon, we went to Captain Mike's Dolphin tours and prepared to go out looking for bottle-nose dolphins. I was the first on the boat to see a dolphin! We pretty much dogged that one dolphin for about a half hour before motoring back.
On Wednesday night, we ate at MacElwees Restaurant which is right across from the Sugar Shack. We decided to go with Tenderloin and shrimp and were not disappointed. I wasn't crazy about the dill seasoning on the steak but the meal was enjoyable nonetheless.
On Thursday morning, we ate for the third time at the Sunrise Restaurant and then headed for home. We trusted the GPS unit to get us out of Savannah and it did. The bad news is that we found ourselves heading over the magnificent bridge over the Savannah River that we had not crossed in entering Savannah. I said "What the heck" as the GPS took us up to South Carolina. Little did I realize the consequences of that decision. Our route took us into the mountains and we were quite hungry and down to a blinking single bar on the fuel gauge when we motored into Hendersonville, North Carolina and another Crackerbarrel. We had the fish special (since it's a Friday in Lent and we are observing Catholics) and then headed back out on the road. Soon we began to see signs of some kind of detour for I-40. It turns out that there was a rockslide on October 25, 2009 and the road was still not re-opened. We stuck with the Interstate detour to Johnson City, TN rather than try the two-lane mountain road route that might have been shorter but likely much more "thrilling". If you do a search on "I-40 rockslide", you can see photos and videos about this rockslide.
We drove until we got to Williamsburg, Kentucky before packing it in for the night at a Super 8. Again, I did all the driving on the trip down and back and this leg was a particularly long one with the added hour because of the detour.
Friday morning, we drove again until we found a Crackerbarrel somewhere....This thing is getting so long I can't even remember where we were yesterday.
The GPS led us unwittingly to the Chicago Skyway which turned out to be a good decision. Traffic from I-65 on to 80-94 west was unbelievable and backed up for miles as we sped by heading for the Dunes Highway. When we got to the Dunes Highway, we realized we didn't want it and went on to the Skyway. Chicago traffic was a bit of stop and go until we got north of downtown and the going was great until we got near home. The fog was so thick I almost missed the turn for W to Hingham. I was down to about 35mph and still could not see where I was going.
The trip on Friday was much nicer than on Thursday because it rained all day. Of course this beats by a mile the trip home from Charleston when we hit a blizzard going around Chicago.
It was a very successful and enjoyable vacation in 2010. I hope you have enjoyed my account.
Ciao, babies!!
