We had a great weekend with the Sharp's, Mike, Sherri, Brian, Lori & Andrew and Tom & Darlene Dufalla, Lori's parents. We visited, did some touring, played games and helped Brian & Lori move into their new house. We toured Beaufort, an old seaport. There are several original houses including the Hammock House where Blackbeard the pirate is said to have stayed. We also went to the North Carolina Maritime Museum that has a lot of artifacts from the area and a workshop where they build small boats to keep the traditional methods alive. The place we found to be the most interesting was the Old Burying Ground that has graves dating back to the 1700's. One of the graves is the girl in the barrel on whose grave people continue to leave tributes. The story is that her mother only allowed her father to take her to England if he promised to return with her. When she died on the ship, rather than the usual burial at sea, her father bought a barrel of rum from the captain in which to place her body in order to preserve it. Thus, he could keep his promise to bring her back. Next we went to Fort Macon which was built in the 1800's. During the Civil War the local militia took and held the fort for a year before Union forces led by General Burnside (of sideburns fame) recaptured it. It was not used again until the Spanish American War after which it became a state park. During the Depression the CCC totally refurbished the fort for the state. When WWII started and the German U-boats were sinking ships off the North Carolina coast the army once again occupied it with a Coast Artillery Unit. Since that time it is once again a state park. It is very well preserved and is worth the visit.
We spent a couple of days in the Savannah, Georgia area. In the historic district we took a 90 minute trolley tour which gave us a lot of information about the city. We then walked around and enjoyed the sites. The city was built around 22 squares that are parks honoring various famous people. Each park is filled with gnarly old oak trees that are cover with Spanish moss. We visited the Telfair Museum to see the Bird Girl statue that was made famous by the story "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". We also went to the Jepson Center for the Arts, a new museum, to see an Ansel Adams photography exhibit. One of the statues in the city is of Florence Martus who for 44 years waved at every ship that sailed by on the river. The city is built on a high bluff overlooking the Savannah River. Because the city is on the bluff the river front buildings are all three or four stories tall. The lower floors on the water were warehouses to store goods being shipped in and out and the top floor was the offices with the front facing toward the city. There was an street call Factory Way that served the middle floors on the city side so in order to get to the offices you had to cross a bridge over that street. While we where down along the water a huge ocean going container ship sailed up the river. Savannah is one of the largest ports for this type of ship in the US. The next day we went to Tybee Island which is right on the ocean. We climbed the lighthouse and toured the museum. The lighthouse is the one of four along the Georgia coast. It has a nine foot tall First Order Fresnel Lens which is made from many prisms to concentrate the light so it can be seen farther out at sea. There are not many of these lenses in the US that are still intact. The museum was in an old concrete artillery bunker that was part of Fort Screven which was built during the Spanish American War. It was used until WWII after which it was sold to the town to be turned into a resort. Some of the houses are the old military buildings. Some people have actually turned the old bunkers into foundations for clubs and homes. They are quite unique with walls that are several feet thick. 
