Sweet Southern Spring Break - Savannah to Macon (March 14 & 15, 2013)

Thursday, March 14, 2013
This morning we met up with Brad and Lisa at Goosefeathers Cafe and Bakery downtown. This is a great little breakfast spot with reasonable prices.

After hitting up Goosefeathers, Lisa showed me her really nice room at the Andaz downtown. She also showed me a cool new backpack that she had purchased for her upcoming international trip and gave me a gift of an Aussie slang book and Conversational Geek book.

We headed out from the hotel to Bonaventure Cemetery. This cemetery is featured in the book/movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and has several famous residents including Academy Award-winning lyricist Johnny Mercer.

We spent a fair amount of time at the cemetery (some of which was quite eerie) taking in the sites and stones.

We headed to the Wormsloe Historic Site next where we looked through the museum before driving down a picturesque 1.5-mile oak avenue.

After reaching the end of the oaks, we walked a path to the ruins of Noble Jones' fortified house built of tabby back in the 1700s.

We continued our hike through the woods to a demonstration area where they normally have costumed actors interpreting colonial daily life.

The actors weren't around to supervise which, of course, gave Kris and Brad free reign to try to injure themselves.

We spent quite a bit of time at Wormsloe before heading back to our rental to show Lisa and Brad our place and eat some snacks. After showing them around, we headed to Forsyth Park for a stroll and looked at some of the historic buildings.

The DOT in Savannah is free public transport with a lot of different stops, so we waited at the stop in the southeast area of Forsyth Park. Turns out that we were standing right outside of the old abandoned insane asylum.

We got off to go to Leopold's Ice Cream. Their caramel swirl ice cream is delicious! Kris and Adam got milkshakes - Thin Mint for Kris and chocolate chocolate chip for Adam.

After Leopold's, it was time to go taste olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

After testing the balsamic vinegar, we were off to sample honey. I would have never known there were so many natural subtleties to honey.

The best was when you take an apple, a piece of gouda cheese, and a piece of honeycomb. YUM!

I bought some of the whipped honey in a travel friendly size. It'll go on pretty much anything, but I have plans for apple slices and cheese.

Next up, we went to a salt and spice store called The Salt Table where you can taste test hundreds of varieties of salt, sugar, and spice mixes. We bought several small bags of salt to season our foods.

Because we hadn't had enough eating, next up was Vinnie VanGogo's for pizza followed by another trip to the Savannah Candy Kitchen.

Kris bought pralines at this location and got a much better deal than was offered on the river. He bought 1.5 pounds of pralines to get a half pound free. You have to buy 2 pounds of pralines on the river to get the free half.

The City Market square was an interesting place.

We went back to Brad and Lisa's hotel to await our hearse.  A band was playing in the lobby so Lisa and Adam danced.

Our driver for our Hearse Ghost Tour (http://www.hearseghosttours.com/savannah-ghost-tours-contact.html) was Scary Sherry. While we don't believe in ghosts and weren't scared by the evenings festivities, we did enjoy the tour. We learned quite a bit about the area and found it a good value at $15 per person.

Weird things about Savannah - quite a bit of the town has been built over cemeteries. Some cemeteries actually extend a block and a half in each direction longer than you think.

Savannah went through yellow fever twice, so there are some mass graves in the city.

During this tour, we found out about the insane asylum.

We enjoyed the tour and Scary Sherry was nice enough to drop us near our rental.

Friday, March 15, 2013

On our way to Macon, Georgia, we stopped at the Claxton Fruitcake Bakery. Claxton is the self-proclaimed fruitcake capitol of the world. The man at the sales counter surely was friendly.

Next up, a home-made Statue of Liberty replica made by Lions Club.

Randomness

Then off to see some scrap metal creations including a man perched in fishing boat, interestingly huge weather vane, and a prophetic well.

After lunch at Zaxby's, we went to the site of the original Stuckey's teal-roofed pecan log store. There is a memorial plaque at the site. (I have never been to an actual Stuckey's, but that hardly mattered.)

Stuckey's certainly didn't matter to Adam.

Our big stop of the day was in Macon at the Ocmulgee National Monument. This site contains the only known example of a spiral mound in North America. This unique 20 ft. tall mound was built and used by Native people from 1350 until the late 1500's.

Adam was really seeming to enjoy the hike to the mounds. He was leading us the entire way.

After exploring Ocmulgee, we checked into the Red Roof Inn. The motel is a good value for the price ($56 for the evening). The rooms were dated but clean and large. The beds and pillows, however, were hard as a rock, and I pretty much got no sleep. I would not stay there again even with the great price.

We got into Macon on the first day of their annual two week cherry blossom festival, so we drove around to Wesleyan Woods Drive and the surrounding neighborhoods to check out the cherry blossoms and mailboxes.

Such nice homes!

We also explored Wesleyan University and a nearby dilapidated building before heading to dinner.

Dinner was at Cracker Barrel to try to accommodate Kris's queasy stomach with something bland. Unfortunately, he was only able to eat six carrots before he went to lay down in the grass of the Cracker Barrel parking lot.

Adam and I enjoyed our meals though. Kris donated his leftovers to a misfortunate man in the parking lot.

Saturday, March 16, 2013
We woke up super early to drive from Macon to Atlanta to catch our 11am flight back to Houston.

There was free breakfast at the Red Roof Inn, but nothing appealed to me so I had a Nutri-grain bar.

Check in at Thrifty was just as easy as checking out.

Sad to leave vacation. We tried to get Adam to participate in a sad face photo, but he wasn't getting it. He just kept telling me not to be sad.

Miles traveled this trip = 930.