April 28 - May 1: Savannah, GA

When we arrived in Savannah, it was already fairly late. So we went to the trusty neighborhood Walmart. (How strange to go from avoiding Walmarts entirely to calling their parking lots all across the country "home"... sort of.)
Upon waking the next morning, we used our camping stove in the van for VanEspresso for the first time. (Don't fret, we opened the doors and windows.

After our successful fancy hobo morning experience, we decided to hit the Savannah Wildlife Refuge before going downtown. It wasn't as easy to find the entrance as we expected, but we may have lucked out going the wrong way. We ended up doing the wildlife viewing drive, so we could keep Yoshi with us and hop out to see the gators etc along the way. It. Was. Beautiful! Jurassic park style.. rolling down the path at a snail's pace taking in the scene.

Yoshi!

big turtle. doesn't translate.

big gator. does it translate?

After our gator adventure, we drove over the bridge into downtown (the wildlife preserve was on the edge of the border with South Carolina, so we got to enter Georgia again):

Ate an egg and cheese sandwich with Yoshi at our feet on the sidewalk, as usual. We instantly found downtown Savannah to have more accessible charm than Charleston. Far more "our speed", I suppose you could say. A much more relaxed atmosphere, with far more patios and a park square every few blocks littered with spanish moss and loveliness. The pride of the city, each small park has a distinct character.. I think every city should have a beautiful square park littered with trees and fountains every few blocks.

We decided to write couch surfing potentials, and before long we got a bite! A gal offered to host us, saying that she unfortunately works in the army all day and goes to bed early before rising at 5am, so she wouldn't be able to show us around. Although the goal of couch surfing is commonly to bond with a local, we were admittingly mainly focused on a free shower. We were thrilled. We set a time to arrive later that evening. Before that, there was this:

This cemetery was the first I've seen to allow dogs, which was lucky. It was too hot to leave him in the car, and having him limited us so completely in Charleston it was refreshing to find outdoor shaded interesting opportunities for us all in our new location.

We wandered down towards the riverside..... as we sat and stared out at the water, a man pointed out an object floating down river... it was a giant (non flat screen) television! We discussed the strangeness of a floating TV. The toothless man was so tickled by this as we watched it float together, he insisted on pointing it out to all passers by. He would laugh, point at it, then point to Kevin and say "Hey! What is that?? Tell them what that is!" ... A TV. They're worthless when the screen isn't flat. Just throw em in the water. Someone can use them to avoid drowning in a shipwreck. (Please sense the sarcasm and throw nothing in the water.)

We went to a bar the book recommended and shared a drink and a turkey burger as the rain storm cooled down the air for Yoshi to have a short nap in the "Van-Home". We then drove towards our host home, and it turned out it was on Park Avenue, right next to the giant famous park with the giant famous fountain I'd seen on various billboards for the past few hundred miles of driving. A nice location to live for a couple of days, I'd say. After a slight panic when she hadn't arrived as swiftly as my bladder decided she should, we were welcomed in and all was well. Even though she had asked if Yoshi was a "clean dog" and he happened to have been walking through the rain for a while and looked a bit disheveled, she loves dogs and was quite a peach. We chatted for maybe an hour before she had to hit the hay, but before she did she welcomed us to utilize anything in her home while she was gone.... kitchen, dishes, bathroom, wifi, cable... and BIKES! We were thrilled. Although it seems a bit unsafe to trust strangers and give them keys and full access to your home when you are never there morning to night, we were grateful she put herself in a vulnerable position and we were able to greatly benefit from her lack of caution.

The next morning, after a much needed shower we walked with Yoshi to the nearby cafe patio for our classic egg cheese breakfast. The unfortunate story about that was the trashy couple that sat next to us with their small boy (the father approached us for a bit showing us youtube videos on his phone, smelling of dark things) and the mother ended up hitting the boy so hard that he collapsed into a sort of passed out stupor half standing and half in a heap of despair on his chair. It was devastating. What do you do, you know? They seemed to know a lot of the locals who would walk by and even ended up asking one of them for some money "for the kid". You want to steal the child and save it, but instead you get as far away from the situation as you can. Because there are so few options available to you.

We wandered to the beautiful fountain, and it was a perfectly romantic spot to receive an engagement announcement phone call from my sister.

There was also an adorable little gated garden in the park, see how pretty:

We then dropped off the Yosh in the air conditioning (which he surely appreciated), and took up our host on her offer of the bicycles. It was one of my favorite experiences thus far on the journey... a beautiful day for a ride along beautiful tree lined streets full on some of the prettiest houses we'd ever seen.

  And Johnny Mercer's house, below:

We walked to the downtown where we had first entered the city, and I ran through the fountain (which spewed chlorine in my eye at an intensely painful pressure... but still felt like embracing my youth, which I'm into.)


Oh yes, and here is a gecko on the apartment porch that wished us well on our journey:

We ended the evening with a few more minutes of nice conversation with our lovely host and then wandered a bit more.

A very pleasant stay. We decided to essentially get up and go the next morning, so we essentially got up and went. After an egg and cheese sandwich, of course.