Leah and I took a trip down to Savannah last week. We stayed in our travel trailer in Richmond Hill, south of town. We arrived just in time for a heat wave. It was in the 90s every day, with humidity to match.

Savannah, which was founded in 1733, is the oldest city in Georgia. It has some very beautiful historic neighborhoods in a fairly compact area. It’s probably best known for the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. We didn’t go looking for the famous Bird Girl statue because it has been relocated since the movie was made.

We didn’t have any particular itinerary for our visit, so every day we just picked something to do or see.

The first day we went to the riverfront and walked around a little. The highlight of that day was stopping for a midafternoon beer. The bar claimed that they had the coldest, cheapest beer in Savannah but the claim was not true. The beer in our refrigerator was colder and cheaper, although I suppose technically the refrigerator was not actually in Savannah.

One of the nice features of downtown is all the squares and parks. Here’s a well-known fountain in one of the better known parks, Forsyth Park.

A nice couple took our picture next to the fountain. If you look carefully you might be able to tell that I have lost weight lately. I have to cinch up my pants with my belt to keep them on. Leah is her usual lovely self.

What does the fountain in Forsyth Park have in common with a toilet? They use similar floats to maintain the water level.

This church, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, is near Lafayette Square. It reminds me of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, but really doesn’t have much in common other than being large, ornate churches near downtown in an old Southern city.

Wormsloe Historic Site has ruins of one of the oldest structures in Savannah, but the most dramatic sight there is the mile-long drive lined with 125-year-old live oaks.

 Savannah’s beach is actually on Tybee Island. We drove out there one day, but I think both of us have outgrown the desire to walk on a beach in the kind of heat we had for this visit. We did climb the Tybee Island lighthouse. When we got to the top I found that my camera battery was dead, so I took some pictures with my phone. Here’s a panorama from four of them. Click to get a little bigger image.

Leah is not in the picture because she stayed inside at the top of the lighthouse. She is not fond of heights, so she decided to experience the view vicariously.

We both like seafood, but Leah really loves it. Savannah is on the ocean, so naturally we expected to get good seafood there. I feel that the most noteworthy aspect of the seafood we ate was its price, but maybe that’s just me. But instead of seafood, let’s talk about weather.

One evening we ate at a restaurant situated along a nice, wide, calm river. We were seated at a big window looking out over the river. This is what we saw.

I have an app on my phone that lets me see the last hour of weather radar images. This is what it looked like then. We’re at the blue dot at right center of the image.

There was a severe thunderstorm warning with a notice to prepare for 60-mph winds, but the storm basically split as it reached us. We got a little wind and rain, and there were a few whitecaps on the river, but we missed the worst of the storm.

The worst part of the trip was the heat. June is definitely not the right season to visit coastal Georgia, but we had to schedule our trip around our petsitter’s availability. I think it would have been much more pleasant in April, or maybe October.

On the bright side, it was only 84 when we got back home, and that felt cool after Savannah.