Spooky Savannah

As I mentioned previously, in the initial planning for Savannah, a few clear themes started to emerge.  One of them, mentioned repeatedly, were the ghost tales about Savannah.  This was the clear focus point for our second day in the city.

After waking and having breakfast, we headed to Bonaventure Cemetery.  Bonaventure is probably currently best known for the "Bird Girl" statue which graced the front of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, although there are myriad interesting statues throughout the cemetery.  The "Bird Girl" statue is now in the Telfair Museum to protect it from vandalism.  Bonaventure isn't too creepy by day, but you could see how when night starts to fall, this is not the place you'd want to be, what with the Spanish moss hanging low from the trees and the silent tombs all around.  Even if you're not the sort to frequent cemeteries, this one is worth a visit for the spooky atmosphere and the unique collection of statuary.

One of the many unusual vistas in Bonaventure

Unbelievably, by the time we got done in Bonaventure, it was time for lunch, so we continued over to Tybee Island for The Crab Shack.  The Crab Shack is highly recommended for kids, and still highly recommended even if you don't have kids.  This was the other location chosen by the kids as their favorite, although I'm not certain it was for the food.  In addition to the old-style beach shack type architecture, there's a pond out front with live alligators, a collection of cats that roam the decks, and a bird house with tropical birds rescued by the restaurant.  To boot, the food was a solid choice as well, and the views from our section of the deck were nice.  I could easily see killing a few hours here on a summer evening.

The gator pond at The Crab Shack

After lunch, we finally headed on towards the Tybee Island Lighthouse.  Although I didn't hear any ghost stories specifically about the lighthouse, I don't doubt that there are a handful out there for the intrepid explorer to find.  I did find that the lighthouse fees were overly steep - they wanted $32 for a family of four to enter.  While that includes entrance to the lighthouse and museum, since all we were really interested in was the lighthouse, we passed on paying the fees, and took pictures from outside the fence, which worked out well anyway.

The view from outside the lighthouse and museum

We spent a little time wandering the beach, which allowed the kids some time to play, before heading back to Savannah for dinner at Moon River Brewing Company.  Moon River Brewing Company was the spot of a Ghost Adventures episode back in 2009, and the waitress was kind enough to let us go into the basement, where some of the strangest parts of the episode occurred.  The beer selection was good, although I think misleading, since almost everything is called a "pale ale", when there actually seemed to be only one pale ale style in the whole collection.  The food was also good, and they serve barbecue from Angels BBQ, so I ended up getting my barbecue fix anyway.

After dinner, we headed south to the Sorrell-Weed House, site of the Ghost Hunters investigation circa 2005.  We had booked a ghost tour there, and we toured both the house and the surrounding neighborhood with our guide, who was superb.  I'll confess that the reviews I found on the web were less than stellar for the tour, but my experience was excellent.  It was a bit chintzy, to be sure, and I would have appreciated a smaller tour size, but all in all, it was an enjoyable time, and the kids had a great time exploring the dimly lit basement with their EMF detectors.

Maybe there's a ghost here or maybe there isn't.  Who's to say?

The tour ended around nine that evening, and so ended our second day in Savannah.