Tybee Island

After Fort Pulaski, we drove on to Tybee Island, which we wanted to see because 1) in-laws Joey and Jodi have wintered there in recent years and commend it, 2) we were in need of a campground and its facilities, 3) which included severe weather shelter, since 4) violent storms were approaching. Also 5) because it was there. We mostly just drove around, stopping at the Crab Shack and then the campground, and then, between squalls, we walked over to the beach.

Background information

Old-timey gas station en route

Crab Shack

With its attendant gator pen

Not on the menu, so far as I could tell

Innovative (to me) table for peeling and eating crustaceans 

Crab Shack environs; it was pretty crowded, so I did a take-away
shrimp and crab combo plate

Tybee Island lighthouse

Apparently severe weather is not uncommon here

Historical signage at the fort/museum; one wonders if this kind
of information will soon be suppressed in states like Florida
and Texas

In time, everything becomes either a museum or a restaurant

Despite the wind and wet, we ventured out toward the beach...
but only this far

Next day parting shot...more of the environs and especially the
very long docks prevalent in the area

Fort Pulaski

Savannah is up the river a bit, mostly marshland, with the entrance to the estuary guarded by a few barrier islands, Cockerel, Tybee, and some others. After nearly losing the war of 1812 (the Brits got distracted by Napoleon), the US government slowly resolved to build a series of forts at strategic points coast-to-coast. One of these was Fort Pulaski, guarding the entrance to strategic port of Savannah. (We have already acknowledged Count Casimir Pulaski, Polish counterpart to Lafayette, who died trying to liberate Savannah from the Redcoats). Fort Pulaski was begun during the Jackson presidency and completed in time to be seized by the Secessionists at the outset of the Civil War.

I visited Fort Pulaski as a child, with my parents, in the 50s, before sister Carole was born. The visit was nominally to see my mother's cousin, Maxine Allen, and family. On that visit, we also saw and perhaps stayed on Tybee Island, saw the fort, and ate seafood, most likely, crab. I have very faint memories of Victory Drive ("but I thought they surrendered!"), unkind things said about Sherman, Maxine herself, the fort, and a pier leading out to the river or one of its many tributaries. Very remote childhood stuff, not the "strong and vivid" impressions Hume theorized about; maybe even just a cluster of thoughts compiled on the basis of subsequent conversations, old fuzzy black and white snapshots, and the like. That I was there, then, is the best explanation of all this. FWIW. Or maybe just brain-in-a-vat stuff. 

At the time of its building, Fort Pulaski was thought to be impregnable to the seaborne cannonade that was expected in time of war. Its brick walls were many feet thick and many feet high, and its many cannons would keep invaders off at a distance. Then, someone thought up rifled artillery, which could hurl a projectile 5 miles--as opposed to the 1 mile range of a conventional cannon and cannonball. By 1862, the Union had set about recapturing its various Rebel-held forts. Still holding nearby Tybee Island, they simply turned their rifled cannons to that side of Fort Pulaski that opened onto its magazine. After a 30 hour barrage, the Fort wisely surrendered and became a Union fort and garrison, and POW-camp, for the remainder of the war. Technology triumphs again. It wasn't until the end of 1864 that Sherman took Savannah, but its port was no longer of use to the Confederacy after 1862.

Not a star fort, but it did have an effective moat (plus a a tidal toilet)

Walls and cannons

Colonel Olmstead's quarters; surrendered in 1862

Cannon

More cannon

Interior, parade ground, etc.

Still more cannon

Part of the wall that was bombarded in 1862

Usual excellent NPS interpretive signage; incidentally, we also
attended an excellent volunteer lecture...the guy really knew his
Civil War history

Union cannonball still embedded in the wall

Up closer

Mid-Day In The Garden Of Meta-Ethical Quandaries

No visit to Savannah is complete without seeing the Bonaventure Cemetery, featured, sort of, in the best-seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Say what you will about the decline of reading, literacy, books, etc., but Savannah's tourism stats skyrocketed after publication of the book and later the movie, in the 90s. Something about "Southern Gothic." The "Bird Girl" statue has been removed from the cemetery, for her own protection, and is now in one of the museums. Another visit.

Entrance

Interestingly does not specifically prohibit hoodoo
ceremonies between 11:30PM and 12:00AM

Having seen enough of Johnny Mercer, we decided to
hunt for the poet Conrad Aiken, whose monument, I've
read, is simply a bench on which one is supposed to 
sit and sip a martini

Bonaventure is mostly all arranged in these neat, and sizeable
family plots

Thus

Street scene

Rather possessive, I thought

Costco evidently was in the monument business some years ago...

Spooky tree

Many obelisks

Running water on every plot--something Pere Lachaise
doesn't have

Art Deco!

Surprisingly, to us, many, many German surnames

Longer view

New arrival

On stilts...must have been expecting a hurricane

Nice statuary all around

Gothic!!!

So the Wright family bought this plot in 1852, but has let it go
unused for 170 years...a really poor investment? Or maybe they
moved to Dayton, Ohio? 

Jogging girl

Something neither Pere Lachaise nor Milan's Cimetero Monumentale
has: tourist carts! we never found Aiken's site, which was just
as well since I was fresh out of gin; but I bet if we'd engaged one of
these guides, we'd have gotten to it easily; maybe they provide the gin

Savannah Out-Takes

As seen on TV

Sort of like the Jambon Experience in Barcelona?

Outside the American Prohibition Museum

Still trying to figure out the connection between tuna
and oysters

Celebrity chef Paula Deen has both a kitchen
shop and a restaurant here; we paid our disrespects
and moved on; Jimmy Carter said she has suffered
enough and should be forgiven her admitted racial
slurs

A varied restaurant scene, despite the southern fried thing

Interesting coffee table in a bank we visited

Decorative downspout cover

A varied restaurant scene, yes, but, horrors! this
"pub" did not have fish 'n chips on the menu; 
probably not mushy peas either

Church spare parts closet