Savannah-Ogeechee Canal

I wrote the other day about Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River protecting the back door to Savannah. Today we visited the canal that connected that river to the Savannah River. This canal was what made it possible for goods to move to and from the Ogeechee River into Savannah.

The Savannah-Ogeechee Canal Society is trying to revive the canal area starting with a small museum and nature center at the Ogeechee River end of the canal.

The area has been declared a historical site.

The woman on duty at the museum gave us a private tour of the canal by driving us in their golf cart down the old tow path. It was a bumpy ride but it let me see the area in a way I would not have been able to do otherwise. The first two pictures below are taken from a new footbridge across the canal and the third one is as close as we got to the river end since mud from recent rains made traveling any further a risky venture.

Today’s rain chased us back down the path and into the museum where we found a model of a “rice trunk.” That’s a channel through a dyke that’s lets a farmer control the water level in a rice paddy.

Among other artifacts on the grounds are this Columbus No. 16 Sugar Cane Grinder.

According to one of the museum’s handouts, a wagon full of sugar cane is fed into this grinder where the juice is squeezed into tubs covered with cheesecloth. The juice is then boiled into the proper thickness and bottled. While the juice is cooking candy forms on the rim of the kettle and is scraped off onto peelings from the stalk and eaten like suckers by the children. Sounds good; doesn’t it? Makes my teeth hurt to think how sweet that must be, though. Please, pass me something salty-crunchy now, OK?

We are camped for a few nights at Skidaway Island State Park. This is another one with mostly pull-though sites but the one lane roads are two-way so it must be interesting to try coming here when it’s busy. The are fully booked for Memorial Day Weekend so we need to move on Friday. I wonder where we will wind up?

I know we are not going to see all the sights here we hoped to see. It’s been raining day and night so we are staying in and staying dry more than we intended.

The challenge with that has been our internet setup. It appears our router is dying. So we’ve been taking turns passing our aircard back and forth between our two computers. It’s Dave’s turn again as soon as I get this posted. We are friends again now but for awhile there the “discussion” about what to do about our poor internet got fairly heated. It’s a good thing we have no close neighbors in this park. Dave wants me to try a new system that hasn’t been proven yet. Why me? Because it uses a cell phone to connect and he just bought a new iPhone. My phone, however, is five years old so my contract is now just month to month so can be cancelled anytime without penalty. He could use my new phone to connect to the internet instead of me having to do it but then do I get to just unplug him when when I get a call? More discussion to come but I don’t think the next round will be heated. Stay tuned for updates as they happen.

Speaking of neighbors, we almost met some the other night. An RV the same brand as ours pulled into a site across the road from us. We’ve been taught not to go introduce ourselves while people are still setting up because it can mess up their routine. So we waited a bit. Then we decided they were probably having supper since they pulled in about six o’clock. So we waited a bit more. Then it started to rain again. Then it got dark. In the morning I looked out the window when I first got up and they were breaking camp. When are you supposed to go introduce yourselves to neighbors, anyway?

While driving around the Savannah area I saw a couple of signs some of you might like. One was a church sign that said, “Exposure to ‘Son’ may prevent burning.” The other was place advertising Angus burgers that had put a “D” in front of “angus!” Any of you remember Roger Miller’s son Dang Me?  How many of you besides me are going to have that in your heads for the next few hours?

Dave just showed me a weather map for Memorial Day. It pretty much doesn’t matter what part of the U.S. you are in–plan for rain. Sorry about that.

TTYL,

Linda