Brunswick, Georgia, Oct. 24 thru 25 - 2009

We stopped in Brunswick, Georgia to see my cousin, Ron and his family. When Ron and I were small, we lived in St. Louis near each other. Ron was about as close to a brother as I ever had. Like most brothers, when one got into trouble, we were usually both in on it. Diane and Ron raised their two boys while serving in the Coast Guard all over the United States. When my family moved to Oklahoma, Ron and I began to lose track of each other. We were able to catch-up and reconnect. Rob, Ron and Diane's son took this photo with Ron's camera.

Their grandson, Drake, is four and joined us for dinner - s0 cute.

Denise is Drake's big sister. She got to visit our RV with her grandparents. It was fun to see her enthusiasm for our way of life. She is in second grade so Penny enjoyed conversation with her. Her interest in science kept me captivated. Unfortunately, we didn't get a good photo of everyone. Rob, Ron and Diane's son, is hidden behind Drake. We were delighted to get to know Rob and his wife, Christy.

Ron works for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. On our last day there, he gave us a great tour of this state of the art facility. It was quite impressive and very interesting. These agencies such as the Secret Service, NCIS, Border Patrol, and many more that compose Homeland Security receive training in a variety of disciplines ranging from pursuit driving to marksmanship and other weapons training to explosives ordinance.

This picture, taken off the web photo, is of the memorial to graduates of FLETC, who have been killed in the discharge of their duties. We're extremely grateful for places like this and the people who work and train there.

Savannah

One of the disadvantages of this lifestyle is that there is always a pest du jour. We have fought gnats, ants, spiders, boxelder bugs, and probably a few more that I can't remember at the moment. Usually moving on eliminates the problem. When we were in Winchester, Virginia, these stinkbugs were everywhere. Fall was coming on, and they were looking for sheltered places to overwinter. The seals around our slideouts, our awnings, and several other places on our coach provided excellent overwintering places. We, however, have been moving steadily south into warmer weather, so we have been picking these little pests out of every conceivable place in the coach. Those of you not from the midwest may ask why are they called stink bugs. Because it you squish them, they stink to high heaven. So, this means each one must be captured carefully and taken outside before the death sentence is carried out or .... Releasing them is almost a guarantee that as night and cooler air arrives, they will return to sleep with us.

We stayed in a nice little RV park south of Savannah. Out our front window was a cute little lake with with several different types of birds. Penny got this photo of three cormorants perched on this branch. They were later joined by two more.
There were several different types of domestic and wild birds inhabiting this lake. On one end, there were several beautiful, graceful swans.
On the other end, were these Muscovy ducks with faces only a mother could love.

Toward the end of the lake was this small island with several trees and shrubs peeking out of the water. This is what they looked like during the day.

As the evening began to fall, however, flights of egrets began to emerge from the skies and land in these branches.

By the evening, just about everything was out of the water. I suspect this fellow had something to do with that.

Although we spent a day continuing to recuperate from our colds, we did manage to get out a bit more here. This is River Street. It is filled with cute little shops and restaurants on the one side, and, of course, the the Savannah River on the other side.

One of this first things we saw as we walked was this model of the S.S. Savannah. Departing from Savannah, it became the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic in 1819. Before departing, it was toured by President James Madison.

At one time, Savannah was the cotton capital of the world. This building was the old cotton exchange. This photo does not do the age of this building justice. When Sherman took Savannah, there were several bales of cotton in nearby warehouses. Sherman inventoried them several times, then at the insistence of Secretary of War Stanton, they were surrendered to a United States Treasury agent. Almost immediately, several thousand bales of cotton disappeared and were never accounted for. Some things never change.

At the east end of River St. is East Factor's Walk. Along this walk is this statue of the Waving Girl. It was constructed in memory of Florence Martus. After an intense but unfruitful love affair, she began waving at every arriving ship hoping one might bear her beau. Eventually, she starting waving at departing ships. From the late 1880s until 1931, often accompanied by her collie, she waved a greeting to every ship coming into port, and a farewell to every departing ship day or night. It was said she waved at over 50,000 ships during this period.Here, River Street and the Factor's Walk curl around these walls to E. Bay Street. I wondered if these small windows were originally gun ports.

Above East Factor's Walk is Emmet Park filled with live-oaks and Spanish moss. As we began our walk around the city, we passed a police station. We thought these old police cars out front were a neat touch.

One of the things you notice quickly as you walk around the old residential area are the windows and doors painted this dark bluish green color. This is "haint paint" It is supposed to keep evil spirits or "haints" from entering the house.

There were lots of neat old houses near downtown. This one was the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low. For those of you who were Girl Scouts, you may remember, she founded

the Girl Scouts of America.This flashy building is the Savannah city hall. When it was built in 1901, it generated considerable controversy because of its price tag. Several architectural features of the original design were omitted to save money.

In several places, streets and walks are paved with this cement-like stuff, oystershell tabby. It is made from whole oyster shells, ground oyster shells, ashes, and sand. It is, apparently, quite durable since some has been in place for over 100 years.

This is Colonial Park Cemetery. It was filled with these neat historical markers. Bulloch was an early advocate of American Independence. You may have heard of his great-great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt. Some of the stones behind this marker likely belonged to some of the nearly 700 Savannahians who died in the great yellow fever epidemic of 1820. The population of Savannah at the time was 7,523. They lost nearly 10% of their population.

This was one of those cool little serendipitous things. The vault you see was the first resting place of Major General Nathaniel Greene, Savannah native, and probably the most brilliant tactician of the American Revolutionary War. He was interred in the Graham family vault. For years, the whereabouts of Greene's remains were unknown.

This is a monument dedicated to General Greene. The Marquis de Lafayette laid the first cornerstone. After resting in Colonial Park Cemetery for 114 years, Greene's remains were eventually located and moved here.

After walking all over Savannah and working up a hunger, we came here to The Lady and Sons restaurant for lunch. For those of you who aren't Food Channel addicts, it belongs to Paula Deen, the Southern Foods guru. Unless you are a party of 10 or more, you must make reservations in person on the day you intend to dine. We made our reservation at 11:30 am and the next available spot was at 2:30 pm. However, the buffet cost $13.00 and was absolutely delicious. Penny had the first collard greens she ever liked. We were surprised at the quality and impressed with the organization. Service was impeccable. She has it wired.

The next day we went to Tybee Island. We had lunch at the Crab Shack shown here. My lunch was quite good, but Pen didn't care for hers. Note the light fixtures and the tables with the hole and trash can in the center. Great for discarding your empty oyster and crab shells. Everything is disposable so no dishwashers needed. For $3.00, you can buy food to feed the alligators. The owner was actually quite an alligator fan. There was a sign saying that there are 5-6 attacks on humans each year. His contention was that you should be more afraid of the family dog.

This moat surrounds one of the places that Ted wanted to see - Ft. Pulaski. Following the war of 1812, a series of coastal defenses was constructed. One of the engineers was a young Second Lieutenant Robert E. Lee. It was considered invincible. Early in the war, it was surrendered to the Confederates without a shot being fired. After it had fallen into confederate hands, General Lee visited the fort and told the commander that the Union may attempt to take the fort, but he could sleep soundly knowing it couldn't be done.

What Lee did not know about was this newly developed weapon, the thirty pounder-Parrott Rifle. This one is now at the fort, but at the time would have been on Tybee Island, aimed at the fort. It could fire further, with more accuracy, and hit harder than anything previously known.

This section of the fort, now manned by this damaged Columbiad cannon was quickly demolished by fire from nearby Tybee Island.

This is the area underneath the Columbiad shown above. It was completely demolished. When a shell was fired through the large hole in the fortification and landed only a few feet from the powder magazine, the Confederate commander, knowing that a hit on the magazine would destroy the fort and kill everyone inside elected to surrender. You can see where new brickwork, laid by the victorious Union soldiers meets the older, darker bricks. This battle was the death knell for heavy fortifications of this type. It was an object lesson on the illusive nature of invincibility

There were two, more durable, legacies. Cockspur Island, on which Ft. Pulaski is located was the landing place of John Wesley, founder of American Mathodism, when he came to America.

With the Yankees now World Champions, the second seems especially pertinent. A photo of a Union formation was taken inside the fort. In the background, a group of soldiers were playing a game defined by rules formulated by Union General Abner Doubleday. It was the earliest known photograph of a baseball game being played by. . . . a bunch of Yankees of course.

The Carolinas

After leaving Virginia, we drove to the Golden Triangle of North Carolina.

Our trip here had one major objective, and this was it. It had been far too long since we had seen our niece Lauren.

Lauren was recently awarded her Master's in Environmental Science, and is now on the staff at Duke. She is very bright, and very involved in a fascinating program designed to characterize the effects of global warming on forest community structure. Ted, the biologist, had a great time talking with her and swapping war stories.
Lauren suggested that we meet at a local restaurant, The Magnolia Grill. They're famous for combining seemingly incompatible flavors and coming up with something wonderful. We had, perhaps, the best meals we've had this year. These desserts were too beautifully presented to snarf without at least taking a photograph.
Almost everywhere you drive there are these little roads that seem to invite you to follow them for a while. This may be a place we will have to return to take advantage of a few more of them.From there, we went to Charleston. As we drove in, we saw many of these little roadside stands selling"sweetgrass" baskets. They are made by techniques brought from Africa by early African-American slaves. They were extensively used by residents of Gullah Island to hand-separate rice from husks. As the name implies, they are made primarily with a local grass called sweetgrass, also known as purple muehly. These baskets are true works of art, and carry prices that reflect that. I'm talking $250 for a bread basket!
This is the view we had from our front window. A large live-oak tree covered with Spanish Moss extended over our campsite. The upside was that it was beautiful and shaded. The downside was an almost constant rain of ripe nuts on top of our coach. Unfortunately we came down with some form of creeping crud while we were here, and didn't get to take full advantage of the area. If we had to be sick, however, this was a nice place to sit and heal.

We did, however, recover well enough to spend at least one afternoon in Charleston. On the way in, we passed a fire station with this whimsical casting outside.

There was block after block of these neat old homes on the riverfront.

This is South Battery Street. To the right is White Point Garden. It is filled with beautiful big willow-leaf live-oaks covered with Spanish moss. True to the state nickname, there were palmettos everywhere.

This is the Charleston customs house. Construction was began in 1855, but funds began to dry up as it became apparent that South Carolina was about to secede. It was completed after the conclusion of the Civil War.

We wish we had felt better, we feel that we gave Charleston short shrift, but since the next move was to Savannah, we were eager to get on the road.

Our Civil War Journey

As you may have gathered, I have always been fascinated by the Civil War. In previous blogs, I detailed our visits to Vicksburg and Gettysburg. The areas in which we have been traveling the last couple of months are, however, rich and densely packed with Civil War history. Penny has been patient enough to accompany me as I visited many significant sites. It could be argued that the formal hostilities began here at Ft. Moultrie. When South Carolina seceded, it claimed both Ft. Moultrie and Ft. Sumter as state property. Since there was a land approach to Ft. Moultrie, on December 26, 1860 the garrison there was withdrawn to Ft. Sumter.

This photo, taken from Ft. Moultrie, is Ft. Sumter. It is rather unimpressive, but it has no land approach. Nevertheless, it was surrendered after only 34 hours of bombardment by General P.G.T. Beauregard's artillery, the first shots of the Civil War.
When the forts were surrendered, General Beauregard, acquired several of these large smoothbore cannons.
In a very clever move, he had the cannons rifled and the chambers banded with an extra two inches of steel so they could fire more accurate and powerful rounds that would be effective against Union ironclads. The above cannon is an example.

This is the Judith Henry House. It sits at the left flank of the Union artillery position for first Manassas. To their shame, no matter your sympathies, Confederate snipers fired at artillerists from the windows of this house without first evacuating Mrs. Henry.

Mrs. Henry, 84 or 85 years of age, depending on which account you read, was killed by a bullet meant for the snipers. She thus became the first civilian casualty of the Civil War.

At first, it looked as though the Union might carry the day. This is the Confederate battery commanded by General Thomas J. Jackson. Here he earned his famous nickname by "standing like a stone wall" in the face of several Union assaults. With the arrival of Confederate reinforcements, the Union was routed to the horror of civilian spectators who had come out from Washington D.C. to witness what they expected to be a short, decisive battle. Here, it became clear that this would not be a short war.

A little over a year later, General John Pope commanded a second Union attempt to win control of this area. This badly conceived and badly managed campaign resulted in disaster. This is Shinn's Ridge. Here, Pope sacrificed several regiments to cover the Union withdrawal.

The Confederate victory at Second Manassas emboldened Lee to attempt an invasion of the north. Here, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, the resulting Battle of Antietam took place. It was the bloodiest single day of the war with over 24,000 casualties. This is the infamous sunken road around which many casualties on both sides occurred. While it was a tactical draw, it was enough of a victory to allow President Lincoln to announce the Emancipation Proclamation.

This is the Burnside Bridge over Antietam Creek. It was also the site of much fighting. Late in the battle, Commissary Sergeant William McKinley, under heavy fire, drove a wagon over this bridge to deliver food and drink to soldiers engaged there. He was commended by none other than General Rutherford B. Hayes for his action. He was promoted to captain, finishing the war as a major. Both men went on to become Presidents of the United States The sycamore tree you see on the far side of the bridge was present during the war.

Clara Barton ordered her wagons to follow the sounds of the cannons. Here, she set up an aid station.

More than two long years and many bloody battles later, General William T. Sherman concluded his famous March to the Sea here. He made this house his headquarters during his stay. Sherman treated Savannah much more kindly than either Atlanta before, or Columbia, SC afterward. In an ironic twist, Sherman captured Savannah on December 21, 1864, five days short of four years after the abandonment of Ft. Moultrie. After his capture of Savannah, Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln saying "Dear Mr. President, I wish to present you, as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah." From here, he headed north with the intent of throwing his weight behind Grant's efforts in Northern Virginia.

Before he could get there, however, Grant was able to successfully conclude his campaign. This is a recreation of the village of Appomattox Courthouse. General Robert E. Lee, finding his situation hopeless, and his escape route barred agreed to work out the terms of a surrender.
The village had been known as Clover Hill prior to the establishment of this courthouse. Since the place had few other claims to fame, when the courthouse was established, the village renamed itself. Contrary to popular opinion, the terms of capitulation were not worked out in the courthouse.

They were, rather, negotiated in this house belonging to Wilmer McLean. In another touch of irony, McLean had lived near Manassas. After the battle of First Manassas, in which his house was struck by a cannonball, he and his family relocated here. He often said that the Civil war started in his back yard and ended in his parlor. McLean was a colorful character in his own right. He claimed to be a farmer, but others said he was actively smuggling goods to the Confederates. Some have alleged that when the Federal troops first showed up in his neighborhood, he feared that his true vocation might be discovered. After the war, he lost this house due to overwhelming debt and became a federal tax collector.

This is the McLean parlor where Lee's surrender was finalized. Grant sat at the small table to the right of the picture and yielded the larger table to Lee. These desks are reproductions. We saw the originals in the Smithsonian.

Rather than being imprisoned, Lee's troops were given paroles and allowed to go home. Many were allowed to keep their horses for spring planting. The surrender documents were completed on April 9th, three days short of four years after the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. Immediately after the finalization of the terms of capitulation, a portable press was set up, and paroles were printed in the Clover Hill Tavern above. These allowed the soldiers to pass through Union lines, and proved to Confederate authorities that they were not deserters.

This is the Johnston County, North Carolina Courthouse. It was built in 1921 to replace the original, destroyed by fire. There, on April 11th, 1865, General Sherman received word of Lee's surrender. He stood on the steps of the courthouse and yelled the good news to each company of soldiers as they passed.

This is the Harper house on the edge of the Battle of Bentonville, NC. It served as a field hospital for both Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers who fell into Union hands. It was the last major battle of the Civil war with more than 4,000 casualties. In yet another ironic twist, the Harpers, owners of this house, were fourth generation descendants of the Harpers who were the namesake of Harper's Ferry, site of John Brown's raid.

This is the Harper Family cemetery. The bodies of several confederate dead are buried within the rail fences to the rear of the stone monument. Because this battle occurred only a couple of weeks before Lee's surrender, it has received little notice or attention.

I've been asked why I'm so fascinated by Civil War history. It was an incredibly sad and terrible time. A few months back, I got into a conversation with a Scottish gentleman at the Culloden battleground near Inverness. Culloden was a horrible battle that is viewed by many as the final battle of the Scottish civil war. He felt that many great nations seem to require a civil war of some type in order to become a united people. In reviewing my limited knowledge of history, it's difficult to refute his contention. Our Civil War was, arguably, one of the first steps that we, as a people, needed to resolve issues that had been festering since before the founding of our nation and allow us to move into the future.