From a Tent in GA

Written on the night of 6.21.2008 to be posted, whenever I get an Internet connection.

I’m sitting in a tent with electricity at the moment typing this entry that is probably well overdue to assuage fears of my passing.

I finished up in Charleston with Kate the nice lady I met though couchsurfering.com. She was real cool and I enjoyed talking with her about all the things she was up to. Despite being allergic to her very nice dogs, I had a good visit. She lives on James Island along the beach just outside Charleston center, and it took all of 2 minutes to walk to the seashore. It was beautiful weather, though a tad hot during the day. On the last night I was there, we headed down to the beach to see if we could see the full moon rise over the water, which unfortunately was obscured by clouds.

I headed down to Savannah mid-morning by way of an old plantation tour because it was only about a three-hour drive down the coast to Savannah from Charleston, so I figured it’d be easy to get to. The plantation called Drayton was lackluster since they had been keeping it in the same maintenance level they’d received it from the family in back in the 1970s.

After leaving the disappointment plantation and finding my way to Savannah it was a trick to find the Georgia state park called Skidaway I was staying at. At $25 a night it was a little pricey for one person, but would have been cheaper per person, had I been a group. It was very small state park, mostly consisting of a campground predominately for RVs. After finding out they had both a power hook and a hook up for cable, I really wish I had a caravan trailer.

Though I wasn’t given much time to think about the lack of my motorized monstrosity because as soon as I pitched my tent, then it started to downpour and I mean monsoon style. Wind was blowing like crazy this rather large branch fell and hit my, bummer, as I was sitting in my car marveling at all the “big fat rain,” as Forrest Gump might have put it. It finally stopped, after about and hour, and I got out to see how wet my tent was, it was pretty soaked, mostly due to my poor staking job and I had to spend some time drying it out. I also took the time to move my campsite to another one as the one I was at had turned into a gutter for all the rainwater. I learned later that the storm had been pretty bad knocking out power all around Savannah and pulling whole trees down.

Unfortunately this was not where my evening ended, I was just beginning to bed down and had gone to do the necessities when I noticed a tick had latched onto me. I HATE PARASITES. I don’t really mind most things and understand that the heavenly father has place for them in his creation, but he could have skipped those in my opinion. To get rid of the tick I ended up using the old fashion method, which is striking a match blowing it out and holding it to the critter. It hurt, but I killed it and got it off me. I only learned the following day that it probably wasn’t the best way to go about it covering it in Vaseline to suffocate it works better. This would have also lowered my chances of catching anything from this nasty bloodsucker, oh well I know now!! I was also thankful to learn later that Lime disease, is not as prevalent in the South as it is in the East and the type of tick that bit me usually doesn’t carry it, which was somewhat of a relief, though I’m watching my bit spot carefully. As much as that day was from hell, the next day went a lot smother.

I got to go around historic Savannah, both by foot and by tour bus. I see why people make such a big deal of the place, the historic district is amazing with the really old trees and houses. There is a street called Jones, which is according to Southern living magazine the most beautiful street in America. I wouldn’t give it my total endorsement, but it was one of the most amazingly stereotypically pretty southern place I’ve ever seen. I would also say that the buildings are amazingly restored and the 21 squares they have are well maintained, but what really makes the whole place is the trees. They have what they call oaks, that just sprawl above the streets and parks that give the whole place this really organic feel. It would be really cool to visit again, though I could not see myself living there. The thing I found most surprising is the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is all throughout the city and done a lot of restoration work in the historic district. I couldn’t really get a sense of their campus as the buildings seemed to be so spread out. I can see why the tour guide was saying that they are very much the life blood of the city.

Today has been spent breaking camp and heading to Atlanta, which truthfully was not that hard but both activities took far longer then I thought they would have. I was intending to leave by 8am by the latest and didn’t really head out until 9:15 as I spent a lot of time organizing my car and finding a specific place for everything. After living in it for the last week and a half it had gotten kind of messy and in need of a thorough once over organization. Getting to Atlanta also took longer then I thought and I stayed for a while to grab lunch with Olivia McGuire, an old college chum and fellow Cornerstone, who was from and living in the area. We didn’t really spend any time catching the sites or anything, just catching up which I was really glad we took the time to do. She just graduated from college and did have a job lined up but it fell through, so is busy trying to find something to do with herself. I can relate, I’ve been out two years and I still don’t have a definite plan.

I left Atlanta about 5:15 in the afternoon and headed north toward Tennessee. I was hoping to stay in a hostel in Nashville, but it being Saturday it was all booked up so there was no reason to go that far tonight, plus I wanted to see if there was much Chattanooga along the way. So as result I decided to stay in Georgia a little longer at an other state park, that once again caters mostly to RVs. There is no cable hook ups, but other then that the set up is very similar to the place I stayed in near Savannah, except I’m sleeping on gravel and I bought a power.… so we’ll see how that goes.

Good night y’all.