Fishing with Gators

It was really HOT in Georgia.  It was in the triple digits, and the humidity must have been in the same range.  

Savannah is smaller than I thought it would be.  The historic district is laid out around 22 green parks (there were 24 when the town was laid out around 1733), each one named for a historical figure, and each one with a statue of a historical figure, but not the figure the park was named for.  Don’t know why statue "A" isn’t in park "A", but I guess that’s part of the charm.  The streets are so beautiful, lined with wonderful live oaks, which themselves are heavy with Spanish Moss.  It looks just right- something about that trailing greenery fits the whole southern mystique.  Spanish Moss doesn’t look nearly as good on other trees, but on live oaks, it is perfect.

We had lunch at The Wilkes House, which serves amazing, old fashioned Southern cooking at it’s best!  I literally could not count the dishes they set on the table.  We started with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread, green beans with bacon, and rice (they have that a lot here).  Then they started bringing other dishes - sweet potatoes, dressing, carrots and raisins, BBQ pork, beef stew, baked beans, rutabaga, greens, okra and tomato, macaroni and cheese, cucumber salad, biscuits, sausage with rice, and cream corn.   Plus sweet tea, and the best best banana pudding I’ve ever had.

The next day we had lunch at the Lady and Sons (aka Paula Dean’s).  It was a really good fried chicken buffet, but it wasn’t as good or as bountiful as WIlkes.   

We had a great time at nearby Tybee Beach.  The sand was burning hot; there are signs about leatherback turtles nesting there, and little holes dug into the sand.  I’m not sure those holes were made by turtles, but they could be… What we did find was a cute horseshoe crab.  We did a photo op with him, then left him alone.

We laid our towels on the sand and walked into the water, which was warm enough to be comfortable and cool enough to be refreshing.  And for entertainment, dolphins showed up!  Their beautiful curved backs rose smoothly out of the water and slipped back down.  We watched them for a long time, just relaxing in the sun and water.  Randy got stung by a couple of small jellyfish but he came right back into the water.  I found out later than I’d burned my neck and shoulders badly, but it was worth it.

We are in the deep south here, which means we find stores like Piggly Wiggly.  I love the cute name, but it turns out that Piggly Wiggly was the first large self-serve supermarket.  Before them, customers had to give their grocery list to the store personnel, who retrieved the items.  Seems like stores sell a lot more by letting customers wander around.

We spent a whole week in the Salt Springs Recreation Area in Ocala National Forest.  We had a full hook-up but no Wifi or Internet.  No bars at all on the phone.  Once we parked in a Walmart parking lot because the phone found one bar, and we could use it to power the PC. It turns out I don't like being out of touch!

Randy put on mask and snorkle and checked out the springs.  The water there full of fish, but it's also 72 degrees.  

He kept telling me that the cold water wouldn’t kill me, but I saw a lot of black vultures sitting around, watching us.  

Randy also went fishing for bass.  Randy’s Indian name must be “Fishes with Gators”; alligators cruised by where he was fishing and one of them stayed, right where he was casting.

In the dusk alligators have a slight blueish color, and they make almost no wake in the water; they move with just a gentle swish of their tail.  Like my first sighting of a bear in Alaska, my first sight of a wild gator took my breath away.  It’s really different than seeing them in a zoo.  This is their land and although they didn’t feel like coming on shore, they could have at any point.  And I would have moved out of their way - very quickly!