March 24 Saturday Day 27 in Port Wentworth Comfort Suites

We start out the day with a visit to the old Spanish Fort with their battle flag still flying over it. Not there yet but getting closer. More info at: http://www.nps.gov/foma/ jerr
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This morning we mailed the following from St. Augustine for Danielle’s grade school class. Forgot to put the date on it.

Hello Class of Mrs. Case,
I have visited the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean since I last sent and e-mail. We are now headed north.
I have sent you a picture of the Oldest House in the USA and built in the 1700’s. The main floor is the only room and is no larger than your bedroom. The house had no bedrooms and no dining room. The people ate, played and slept in this room.

Have a Nice Day,
Flat Stanley
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Our main event for the day was the Castlillo De San Marcos National Monument, another free activity. For those over 62, you can get a lifetime free pass for all National Parks for 10$ once and use forever. It is a fort built by the first Spaniards to protect their holdings. It was built with that shell clay rock coquina, it turned out that the cannon balls would only stick in the wall because of its composition and not shatter the wall. This fort had never been attached and conquered, Only during the civil war the confederates took it over from one lone Yankee and 200 of them.

An interesting fact was that during the early 1800’s the fort was a refuge for blacks. If they could get out of Georgia and Alabama and make it to the fort they could become free if they became Catholics and became soldiers. There were a couple hundred who did this.

It is an interesting structure as it is not square but has a buttress at each corner that opens in two directions for cross fire. There is a group of volunteers who on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays fire a cannon five times during the day, quite the spectacle. They wear the clothing of the Spanish period. I thought well be have seen Burg’s battery do it what could be so different. Well the pomp and circumstance of the lead up to the firing. The five men have their stations and a leader person shouts out the instructions in Spanish. They start off by kneeling on one knee and signing themselves. It took probably 5 minutes to conduct the firing and it made a loud noise. They said the small cannons could shoot up to a mile and a half, with the heavier shells thee and a half miles. Also they had great accuracy, he said because the men were soldiers for life and they got extremely accurate as they would shoot 77 cannons six times an hour, hour in hour out.

After the firing off to Savannah we go. We worked close to the beach mostly with A1A. We ate at Jacksonville Beach’s Eddie Bahama’s, the merlots were non-descript, Shirleen’s coconut shrimp delicious, my buffalo shrimp quesadilla was non-descript, to hot to have a flavor but the fries were good.

On the north side of Jacksonville we took a 10 minute ferry ride with the car over St. John’s Bay, 3.25$. Nice touch as we were not in a hurry. After we left Florid and got into Georgia we went to the highway as there are no intercostals that we could find on any map we had.

Arrived downtown Savannah at 5 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon over a music-fest weekend. No accommodations, even asked if the Hyatt or Hilton had any rooms, the Hampton said not even the hotel that starts at 309$ a night had any. We had to go 15 miles out of town to find a spot, I am sure one of the run-down places would have had one but we are on vacation not a quick jaunt through the countryside. It turns out these nightly stays have become home for us, not our real home as that could never be replaced.

Ya, time to eat. We went down the line from where we were at and found a place that had an outside area to eat. The Island grill in Port Wentworth GA. I have nothing against bikers except for their smoking cig and we happen to be down wind, every one of them. That is a problem with eating outside as that many times becomes the smoking area. Shirleen’s merlot and my Bud draft were just fine, well I really would have like a glass like the wine had but I must have looked to shifty for one. We had a quick split order of grouper fingers with onion rings, really tasty.
jerr