May 31 Day 7

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? - Click here for our current location !

Lennie and I spent day 7 of our trip wandering around Savannah GA. We traveled a few miles to the historic district and parked the bike. We decided to take a narrated trolley tour since the historic district is pretty large, and we were unsure how to attack it on our own.

The historic area of Savannah is arranged in square blocks with small green (park like) areas sprinkled throughout. The original town plan defined 24 park areas, however today, there are only 22 remaining park areas. Most of the park areas contain some sort of memorial, the one below is a statue of James Oglethorpe who was the founder of Savannah.

This is another park area in the historic district, called Chippewa Square. The fellow in the foreground is sitting on a park bench behind a short wall...

Toss a little ivy on that wall, and move the park bench to the opposite side, and you have the famous scene from Forrest Gump ("life is like a box of chocolates"). Yes, it really was shot on this exact spot in Savannah. The actual bench that was used by Tom Hanks in the movie has been moved to the Savannah History Museum, but the area is still commonly photographed by tourists like us. A number of places around Savannah were also used for scenes from the movie "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" directed by Clint Eastwood.

There are a huge number of really neat homes in the historic district, both in regards to their historical value, as well as their architecture.

Savannah's historic district contains homes and buildings with ornate Victorian architecture, simple Federalist architecture, intricate Gothic-Revival architecture, and even Italianate architecture. In fact, examples of most, if not all, of the nation’s 18th and 19th century prevailing architectural styles can be found here. Below are a few of the places the trolley tour took us...

Savannah actually sits on a large bluff near the Savannah river. Here you can see the extremely steep stairs that drop you down from town level to the river side... watch your step...

Here is a shot of one of those container ships in the Savannah river near the port.

Tomorrow we will take a quick 2 hour shot down the highway to Charleston SC. Looks like lower temperatures, and less humidity, perfect for a little sight seeing.

Not many miles covered today, as we spent most of the day on a trolley or walking around historic Savannah. We rode 11 miles today, bringing our trip total to 1889 miles. Below is a map of today's route.