Savannah, Georgia!

We took a weekend and went to Savannah, Georgia and it is beautiful! It is super hot! We went down there thinking it would be nice and as soon as we got out of our car, SWEAT! Blah! We were in long pants and had to change into shorts. Savannah is gorgeous though, the live oak trees are huge and the old architecture is amazing to look at.

We went on a few historical house tours, our first was the Juliet Gordon Low house. Juliet was the founder of the Girl Scouts, it was really interesting learning of how the Girl Scouts came about. She was mostly def through most of her life, such an interesting woman. Our second house tour the the Owens Thomas House, a extravagant home, it had some architecture inside that we haven't ever seen before. The Owens house also had a beautiful garden in the back of the house.

We stopped by a very old cemetery that had a creepy feel to it, it said that a lot of the people buried there were killed by yellow fever and various other diseases. Also our tour guide said that when the city of Savannah was expanding and needed to widen the streets they paved over 5000 plus graves, so we drove on dead people, spooky and sad at the same time.

We took a historic tour of Savannah that took us through a lot of the different parks inside Savannah and explained what the monument built inside of them mean. The parks were beautiful, they were everywhere in the historic district of Savannah, there was one every couple of blocks. The parks added to the coolness of Savannah.

We then journeyed though East River Street and found an old ship that looked like a pirate ship. We went aboard and shivered our timbers. The ship had really close quarters to live and is still sailed to this day, fun stuff. The ship rounded out our first day in Savannah.

The very next day we headed to the Savannah History Museum, typical as most history museums go, but it did have a replica of an ironclad. I have never seen real proof that those actually existed but there it was, it was pretty cool. Right next door the museum was the Roundhouse Railroad Museum. The railroad museum was an old railroad hub that housed all the different train cars used back in the day, like coal burning steam engines. We even got to ride in one of the old train cars pulled by a steam engine.

We headed over to the Andrew Low House and took a tour, it was a very pretty house. All of the rooms looked really well kept up and in great condition. Andrew Low was the man that married Juliet Gordon Low the founder of the Girl Scouts. This house also had a pretty garden in the front of the house.

On our way out of the Andrew Low house we saw a cathedral across the street, so we decided to go and have a look. It was St John's Baptist Cathedral, it is said to rival St Patrick's Cathedral in New York. It was very ornate and beautiful inside.

The last stop was Bonaventure Cemetery, which is said to be haunted. One of the hauntings is a little girl named Gracie, she is said to be heard crying on the wind. When we went to her grave, a little girl had written a note to her and told Gracie that she was sorry she was so sad, it was pretty cute.

Feeling like Spring

For our third week in Georgia, we wanted to see more of the local culture and area that we are living by. We began our exploration in Milledgeville GA. Milledgeville is the closest town to where we are staying. It was the first capital of Georgia until it was moved later to Atlanta. Our first stop in Milledgeville was Lockerly Hall. This home was a larger plantation that was built in 1839. It is one of the few homes that have been preserved in Milledgeville. Many of the homes were burnt in the civil war. It is said to be haunted, but we didn't run into any ghosts on our visit.

The next stop was the old Capital building. The building looks like a castle and we had hoped to go up into it, but unfortunately it is only open on the trolley tour and the trolley was broken when we went for it. Even though the upper building tour didn't happen, we did get to see a larger museum with civil war information and artifacts.

After we had visited those two places, we headed over to Macon Georgia to see the Cherry Blossom festival and to visit the Hay House. While we were looking around the town in Macon, we came across one of the older churches in the area and took some of these inspiring shots.

The Hay house was very nice looking. It was designed to look like an Italian mansion. To save money they painted many of the walls to look like wood or like marble. It was some of the best facade painting I have seen in a home. I kept thinking that the walls were carved out marble, or the walls detailed wood, but it turned out to be painting most of the time. We weren't able to take pictures inside, but here is what we did get. If you ever go to Georgia, I recommend you visit this house.

After spending our time in Macon, we headed outside of the town to see a local festival, the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a local gathering much like heritage days in Utah. It is beautiful to see the plants flowering everywhere in Georgia at this time. One of the coolest things we saw was the hot air balloons at the Cherry Blossom Festival. They didn't take off, but instead lit up like giant Christmas lights. That was the end of our day, we experienced a little bit of the local culture, the events, and really enjoyed it.