Wonder x Jungle: Tybee Island and Savannah, GA (Part 1/2)
Natural Wonder + Concrete Jungle = Wonderful Jungle? Natural Concrete?
On the way to our next destination, N’s phone’s navigation system began by directing us to state roads with yellow dividers and occasional traffic lights. As we drove through South Carolina, we went through pockets of little communities — with homes, a gas station, and a few churches — before the landscape on both sides of the road turned to what looked like tree farms. We could see vast fields in all stages of tree-growing: little baby trees, fragile and tender-green; older trees of about 10 feet or so looking like awkward teenagers; tall, strait trunks of what looked like evergreens. The ugliest sights (and sites!) were the aftermath of the harvest, with tangled piles of dried-up trunks in muddy fields with imprints of the tires of bulldozers and trucks used to raze everything. They reminded me of the breathless early days computers and email, when pundits predicted the birth of the paperless office and the salvation of forests. Swing-and-a-miss.
As we followed the navigation directions, it dawned on us that we were being continuously directed through state roads, and these roads did not have rest areas. So for lunch we concocted a plan to stop at a parking lot of one of the many churches that we drove by. (Helpfully South Carolinian state roads include official road signs announcing “Church”.) Through sheer serendipity, we saw signs for the “Lick Fork Lake Recreational Area” and followed those instead. That’s when N. checked his phone and realized that he had “Avoid Highways” checked on his map app. *Face plant*
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This time our hybrid adventure led to both a natural wonder and a concrete jungle: Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia.
First, we spent Sunday doing those quintessential Sunday things: church and brunch.
Service was at 10 am at the First African Baptist Church; it is currently celebrating its 245th anniversary. The congregation had recently begun to worship in person again, and those attending were asked to mask. The service was also streamed. As if we needed yet another reminder that the younger you are, the better you are with tech, the two people involved in controlling the cameras looked to be in middle school. Four ladies led the singing and praise, expressing and encouraging devotion.
Now, food for the body: brunch.
As with many others aspects of our lives, in travel and tourism, one aspect of the internet has both worked and not worked. Crowd-sourced wisdom has drawn attention to businesses — sites, restaurants, activities — that are the “Top 10 Best Things to See, Eat and Do in [insert city name].” For great places that need a boost, mention in one of these lists must feel like winning the lottery. And yet, the buzz created by online reviews is such that, as those same businesses are mobbed by crowds, we feel deprived when we miss them: FOMO. And even when we get that selfie, eat that donut, or get those coveted tickets, our reaction often is, “What was the big deal about?” Reality is never match for the frenzied expectation that is built up.
I write all that as a preface to our experience at a brunch place in downtown Savannah. The place had a long line outside, but it moved quickly. It was a dive, with tables and chairs from the 80’s at least, with thick mugs of weak coffee and variations on the theme of eggs-with-pancakes-grits-or-corned-beef-hash. I should mention here that we consider ourselves diner connoisseurs — we often seek out dive-y diners and have had more eggs-and-pancakes in greasy-spoons than we’d admit to our doctor. As for this place which appears in several “Top 10 Brunches in Savannah”: the kitchen was obviously trying to get food out as quickly as they could, because I could see that my over-easy eggs were still raw — with a watery film inside the barely cooked outer layer and that raw little string that never falls off when you’re trying to separate the yolk from the white. I have made better grits at home, even if I say so myself. The corned beef hash was a pleasant surprise: shaped like an extra-large slab of Spam, it was melt-in-your-mouth soft, enough to make me want a whole bowl of it along with a spoon to eat it with.
We ended the day with an afternoon at the North Beach in Tybee Island. After a 10-minute walk from our campground, we arrived at a charming beach with all the things that charming beaches should have: a wide expanse of sand, seashells rife for picking, bars with loud music and cold beer. Bonus: this place even boasted an old fort, a marine science museum, and a lighthouse. I don’t remember seeing this little beach in raving online reviews — and that’s a good thing!
