Our first point of call on our "Life Stage 2" was in Hilton Head, South Carolina where we were to meet up with a bunch of friends from Bermuda: Judy & Keith, Sarah & Earl, Kathy & Bruce although as it turned out Kathy and Bruce's house in Costa Rica had been threatened by one of the many summer hurricanes as heavy rain was threatening to wash the house away down a mountain, so Bruce went there rather than to HH... and happily things turned out not to be quite as bad as feared.
I've already tracked my tour on the great app
here so won't go into great detail about what we did on any given day.
High spots that immediately tick all imaginable boxes were:
- Two more states off the list (South Carolina and Georgia) -- we are trying to visit them all and think we are about 25 or so.
- Paula Dean's southern fried chicken -- the buffet at her restaurant was just ridiculous. I didn't feel like eating for two days. The chicken was great too.
- Shrimp & Grits -- I'd seen this on the TV super chef programmes on Food TV and wondered what the big deal was. If the ones we'd eaten were typical, this dish is fantastic!
- Plenty of really interesting history which of course I love -- I hadn't realised for example that the British were ready to call it quits in the Revolutionary War until they captured Savannah as a result of massive incompetence by the French (of course) and the Americans in 1779 or 1780. This single act made us think that having a second foothold (the only other being New York) could make a difference. As a result thousands of troops were sent over and Yorktown happened a couple of years later. We'd been repulsed at Charleston a while earlier so if the same happened again at Savannah, we'd have been spared the agony of the next two years.
- South Carolina was the catalyst in both Revolutionary War as well as the Civil War -- both were about economics. The first was taxation by the Brits to pay for the standing army in the west keeping the peace on the border with the Native Americans. It was stupidly introduced and repealed as soon as the Brits realised it. Despite that the colonists still preferred to go their own way. The second was economics too but combined with stubbornness. Slavery was just a part of it, although an important part.
- Beware regional airports -- our flight from Savannah was delayed because of engineering problems. The Delta lady said that in such cases the first flights to be cancelled are regional airport flights and that hub flights wouldn't be. So fly through a hub wherever possible.
- Bugs made a real difference to life in the 1600/1700's -- lousy medicine meant that the chance of making it through childbirth was pretty slim so out here in the islands, few plantation owners actually stayed on site. They moved where it was safer. This meant they left the place in the hands of overseers and slaves, most of African origin, so a whole different rhythm of life developed as did the language used seeing as few shared a common language. This is unique to this area.
- The guy that owned HH was a big techie like the Facebook, Amazon, Google guys -- he was the guy who organised the first splitting of the atom and funded the Philadelphia Project initially. MIT was basically him. He finished off radar for the Brits in WWII as we'd hit a wall and only gone part of the way. He used HH as a shooting lodge until the 1950's when he sold it to loggers who then decided to develop the deforested island.
- The weather was really great! Off the plane it was 85 and humid. No snow, little chance of frost. This is pretty nice weather! We will be back.
- Flat -- if you were a skier, not great on many counts but for a golfer, tennis player and someone who likes to ride bikes, HH is pretty darn good.
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| Cycling on the beach at low tide was special |
- Flag raising at Fort Sumter -- this was brilliant. It is very easy to roll your eyes and be cynical at mindless jingoism but being proud of the flag and getting involved in its raising, even if only on just the one occasion in your life, has got to be a high point. I couldn't get near the flag and felt that I'd missed out on a small piece of something. I'd have preferred the union jack of course, but that was never going to happen and will never likely happen as we are keener these days in apologising for everything we've ever done rather then celebrating what we have accomplished.
- Cocktails -- I've said it before and will say it again that I think that there is nobody better at making great cocktails than Americans. We had many and it was a very happy series of empirical tests.
- Colonial muck ups -- back in the early days of these colonies, much of the administration carried out was focused solely on the economics of exploitation. The sugar states in the West Indies were testing beds for the huge plantations in the southern states of the US and at the time were more profitable. So this was how the plantations came to be set out. This also meant less focus paid on them by the mother country. As Colonialists helped the Brits in the 7 Years War against the French primarily (George Washington was a general in that conflict), in so doing they discovered how good they were and how little attention was being paid them... except for taxes. The result was revolution.
- Willie Nelson at 84 -- in his day Willie was a phenomenal performer and continues on his merry way on the road. A review that I read of the show we saw in Savannah reported that there is rarely a set list, the band simply joins in when they hear what Willie starts to play. His voice was strong and the notes that he hit were fine and reminded us that despite the aging process he remains one heck of a performer. He stood through the entire 90 minute show as well so he's still in reasonable nick. He is one guy that will keep on going.
- Colonial muck ups 2 -- the success of the colony at Charleston (after the usual slow start) was the catalyst for the new colony at Savannah. Proximity to the Spanish in Florida was another with Savannah being seen as a buffer. The first governor was a Major Oglethorpe who came up with the grid pattern and chose the site on top of the bluff. He made friends with the local Native Americans and led successful punitive expeditions against the Spanish and set things up as his vision of utopia which was no hard liquor, no slaves, no lawyers and no Roman catholics. His massive and total success against the Spaniards did away with the no RC rule but the others slid in as soon as he was recalled to England to answer charges of mismanagement (pretty much like every first governor of the colonies all over the world). However the man in charge at the time of the Revolutionary War was imprisoned, then freed when the British took the city again and proved so popular that he was asked to remain in the job after the British lost the war. So while Oglethorpe probably put people off with his high principles (which were likely the real reason for his recall), Governor Wright proved to be a stellar administrator and had one of the squares in Savannah named after him to boot.
- The Christmas present that saved Savannah -- rather than torch Savannah as most other southern cities that he captured, General Sherman chose to give it along with thousands of bales of cotton that could not get past the blockade to President Lincoln as a Christmas present in 1864. The result is the lovely city that we see today... and a whole bunch of much needed foreign currency into Union coffers. You cannot get too far away from economics.
- The trees -- fabulous live oaks with Spanish Moss and cedar trees.
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| This cedar dates back to the late 1500's or early 1600's, before the colony began |
- Carmine's in New York -- I was introduced to Carmine's during a business trip to NYC back in the 1990's when I asked for a restaurant recommendation, preferable Italian family style. I wasn't ready then (or now) for the huge portions but at lunch time they are half size which is still twice as much as any normal human being can eat. Having failed to get tickets to see Springsteen, we needed a filip. Linguine and clam sauce Carmine's style did it!
I've forgotten lots of stuff that a quick re-read of the Track My Tour blog will refresh but one of the things that stick in my memory the most came as a result of a refreshment stop at a roof top bar in Savannah.
We were having a drink after a longish walk around town and shared the table with another couple and began to chat. The guy was a chemist from North Carolina who worked in a contact lens manufacturer and did most of the talking for the couple. They were looking for a retirement place and had spent a day in HH, then Charleston the night before and were staying in Savannah for that night before driving back 12 hours in all. I said that this sounded like a long way, a lot of effort and a small amount of time to be able to accomplish this and was met with a blank look (as in what are you talking about buddy? This is normal). He said that their preference looked to be HH as he wanted to play some golf. We said something along the lines of that's a great way to meet friends and do some exercise at the same time to which he replied "That would be nice. I don't have time for any friends at the moment. All I do is work".
I didn't know how to respond to that.
