Savannah Continued

Today is David's birthday and we are celebrating it on a cold, wet, windy day.  This morning we awoke to rain and 41 degrees.  We do have a loaner from the Mecerdes dealer where our camper is about to get a new transmission and with luck we will be back on the road Thursday skipping one of our favorite parks completely but spending an overnight at a St. Augustine state park before we get to the Everglades.

For amusement today we have gone to Tydee Island which is about 25 miles from Savannah to see both the lighthouse and the pier.  With the wind and rain we managed to get only into the pavilion and then we're just barely protected from the wind and rain.

The Tybee Island light is one seven remaining Colonial lighthouses and is 270' tall.  It was ordered to be build in the late 1700's.  It would have been much nicer on a sunny or partly cloudy day.

As the temp was hovering now in the high 30s, we headed to Fort Pulaski, which is a wonderful structure dating from the first half of the 19th century and is known as a "Third System" of coastal fortifications.  This means that the design was more robust than previous fort designs. Nearly all of the 30+ forts built after 1816 in this Third System still stand and are primarily found on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.  We watched a 20 minute film about the history which gave us time to warm up while we were in the Visitor's Center before we headed back out into the heavier rain and wind to walk around the fort.

Fort Pulaski was built following the War of 1812, and completed just prior to the Civil War.  The Confederate Army seized it immediately after hostilities began, but surrendered it about two years later after a 30-hour Union bombardment from Tybee Island tore away a section of the fort and threatened to touch off the fort's twenty tons of black powder.  Thereafter, the Union used Pulaski as part of its southern coastal defenses and as a prison for political prisoners.

View of the moat and fort from visitor's center.

This is the entrance into the fort which is surrounded by a moat, something that surprised both of us!  This is the view as you leave the visitor's center and proced to the fort.

Fort entrance and moat.  We didn't see anything about how deep the moat was and were not going to jump in to find out.

We stopped in the gift shop to look around and as you can see it is somewhat laid out like a period store.  David acquired a nice new baseball cap to add to his collection.

All along this wall going both sides from the entrance were quarters, and various other rooms that were not housing cannons.

Yep, pretty big cannon.

David,standing gives you the sense of scale.

Looking out from one of the gun slots.

By the time we had toured the fortress we were both cold and wet and headed back toward town and a friendly Starbucks for something hot to drink.

Now our challenge will be to figure out where to go for dinner.