East Coast--Savannah, GA--Day 12

Site seeing today. We started off this morning my stopping by my friend Diane's office. She works as the volunteer coordinator in a facility for alzheimer's patients. She also owns theaphy dogs and she usually takes one of them with her to work as the dogs help with the patients. Here is a picture of Joanne and I, at Diane's house yesterday, with four of her five dogs.

Our first sight seeing stop was at Old Fort Jackson. This is one of many forts that were built along the East Coast in the 17 and 18 hundreds to defend the U.S. ports. This fort is one that is not under the control of the U.S. Park Service and is owned by a private, non-profit group. Considering all their money is from donations they have done a tremendous job of refurbishing this fort. The history in these old forts is really interesting. We have been able to tour several of them in our travels around the country.

The next stop was for lunch at the Crab Shack on Tybee Island, east of Savannah. Our friends had driven us by this place on Saturday and insisted the food was great. They were not wrong. Lunch was served outdoors on their deck. They have many unique and humourous displays around the place and have an enclosed pond in front full of small, live gators.

After lunch we headed for Fort Pulaski National Monument. This is another of the U.S. forts that were built to protect the harbor. This fort was seized by the Confederacy upon the start of the Civil War but was later taken back by Union troops. As the Union forces maned this fort the Rebels maintained control of Fort Jackson, which is farther up the river into Savannah. The Park Service Ranger took us on a walking tour of the fort and explained it's importance in both the Civil War and in other times during our nation's history. While the Rebel's had control of the fort they were bombarded by Union forces from two different directions. One can still see the cannon ball hits in the outer walls. This fort, as most of them we have seen, was surrounded by a moat filled with water and had a draw bridge for entry. This helped to keep the enemy from being able to scale the walls. The moat today has several gators swimming in it.

Our last stop was to see another lighthouse. This is the Cocksur Island Lighthouse. It is located on it's own little island and at high tide the island is under water, as it was today. Due to this we were not able to get very close to the lighthouse to take it's picture but we do have another lighthouse to add to Joanne's collection.