“More butter!”
Ok, but first, I better go for a run.
When you roll into the the city of the Queen of Butter, you need to make plans to balance out some of the sin.
Long story shortened to weed out details that only other long distance runners crave hearing: I ran another 26 mile race, again, without training. Because I clearly learned my lesson from running a long race without training for a long race the previous 2 times. It’s so hard to resist the temptation of an organized long run when the course loops around your home for the week (State Park). So, I ran the Skidaway Marathon. It was a nice day – humid, warm, but overcast (thank you gods of under-trained runners). I was playing PokemonGo throughout the run, but got to talking to a nice gentleman from Nebraska, and missed catching my ‘unicorn’ – a Lapras. It was all very sad, but at least I met the nice guy from Nebraska. Jake was a bit smarter and ran the half-marathon. He was able to catch the Lapras because he was done running and wasn’t talking to a nice guy from Nebraska. Instead, he was waiting for me at the finish line – laying in the grass. Good catch on that Lapras, Jake, but amateur hour on the grass thing. By the time I arrived at the finish line he had quite literally been eaten alive by about a bazillion noseeum/gnat bugs. The evidence of their feast was apparent on his poor itchy, pock marked body for the remainder of our stay in Savannah.
So, anyways, now that we ran the long race, we could clearly spend the next two weeks stuffing our face with southern delicacies. Since we spent our 2 weeks in Savannah without visitors or area friends, we did end up eating ‘regular style’ (aka, home cooking) most nights. But when we went out – dango, it was worth it! Oh, and we also ate at our first BoJangles, which is not a place that we had ever dined at before. I give it a 2/5 star rating, because their mac-n-cheese was pretty good, and it was good for cleaning out the system. However, can’t say we’re all about the ‘Jangles now.
We decided to go ‘full blown tourist’ on Savannah. We weren’t messing around. We bought a Trolley ticket, taste-tested all of the ‘taste testable delights spread throughout the many tourist candy/cookie/honey shops in the city, and waited in a decently long line for mediocre ice cream at the much beloved Leopold’s. Savannah is a blast – open container friendly laws, a crapton of history splattered all over the place, food eating places galore, walkability, people watching primetime…
We also made a trip out to Hilton Head, because, well, we heard it was cool. There were nice bike paths there – which we were busy enjoying on a Saturday afternoon until Jake’s bike got all janky on us. Luckily there are also a plethora of bike shops, so we got it fixed up. We checked out the beach, which was littered with sun-scorched humans, beach toys, and the occasional lost child – it was a bit busier than the beach we enjoyed in Myrtle during the off-season. We decided to skip eating on the island and instead picked up some homemade ice cream at a place with a gigantic peanut on our ride back to Skidaway (where we were parked for our 2 weeks). The ice cream was fine – the peanut was gigantic.
Savannah also lended us our first ‘real tornado’ experience. The weather was reportedly going to be a bit kooky (overheard this from a gaggle of older ladies at the coffee shop), so Jake was keeping an eye on it all evening. At about 11:30pm he announced to my sleeping figure (imagine sleeping beauty, because that is a very accurate depiction of how I appear while sleeping) that it was ‘time to go’. Radars had confirmed 2 tornadoes on the island. An RV is no place to be when a tornado is in town. So, we packed up the cat and headed to the park bathroom, where we were greeted by the rest of the park’s overnight guests. We hung out there for about an hour, and then we all headed back to our respective mobile homes/sleeping crevices with the knowledge that we would all likely reconvene in the bathroom party area around 3am, when another round of storms was likely to move through. Luckily for Jake, the second line of storms diverted North, as I was allowed to sleep uninterrupted for the rest of the night. I don’t do well without a proper (see: 8-12 hours) of sleep. Luckily for us and the rest of the park residents, none of the tornadoes came through the park.
When the bugs weren’t munching on Jake, we weren’t playing tourist, running marathons or working and tornadoes weren’t threatening impending doom, we found tons of pretty places to walk (or run some more). We walked and ran around Skidaway (as part of, and separate from the marathon). I spent a morning running the old railroad path on Tybee Island. We paid a few bucks to walk amongst the live oaks of Wormsloe Plantation. We took in the splendor of our campground at Skidaway State Park. Georgia is just damned lovely. A Southern Belle. Sassy, gorgeous, moody, and polite… buggy.
