2005/03 Deep South trip - Fort McAllister |
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Friday March 18th
We had a lazy day driving north along the Georgia coast across the beautiful bridge at Jekyll Island to our next destination, Fort McAllister park, just south of Savannah. This wasn’t one of our chosen destinations, but every park on the beach in Georgia is fully booked at the weekends months in advance, so I just said to the reservations clerk, “Find us a campsite. We’ll drive to it.” The campground is on Savage Island, at the end of a causeway, in the maritime forest surrounded by the marshes of the Ogeechee River and Redbird Creek, so it’s an interesting spot. We walked the park’s main trail in the evening and met the deer and squirrels. It was still cold, in the forties, despite the forecast of seventies at the weekend.
After a cold night, we saw our first sunshine in almost a week. We spent most of the day at the fort, which overlooks the
OgeeChee River. The fort was built by the Confederates during the Civil War, to protect Savannah from the Union navy. Although only built from earthworks, it survived many attacks from the sea. It did much better than the fancier brick forts, which fell apart when hit by shells from the new-fangled rifled cannon. Eventually, it was overrun by Union troops from the land, one of the last victims of Sherman’s “March to the Sea” across Georgia. If I remember, this was the last few chapters of “Gone with the Wind”.
Today, the fort’s earthworks are well preserved, and some of the underground rooms and passageways have been restored. That’s partly due to Henry Ford who bought the islands for his “summer cottage” and took an interest in the ruins of the fort.
Sunday March 20th
Sunday was beautiful, around seventy degrees, with a light breeze. The campground emptied as all the weekenders left to go back to work. (Ha!) I ran the Redbird Creek trail. The breeze was bringing down great swirls of brown leaves from the live oaks. This made it look like autumn, but it was just the new leaves pushing the old ones off.
After lunch, we took the kayak up Redbird Creek, visiting the herons and sandpipers, and waking up a deer that was sleeping back amongst the reeds. We saw no alligators, but there were a number of sunny spots on the edge of the water where the reeds on the banks had been flattened into a bed, so they must be here at times. The snowy egret is common in these marshes. Note the yellow feet on the black legs, a natural for a Disney cartoon.
The creek had carved many channels through the marsh, a maze of mud and reeds, and we were looking for a path with enough depth to keep us afloat, and also keeping an eye on the clock, as low tide could leave us stranded in a sea of mud. When we did run aground, I was told that waiting for the next tide to float us off was not an option! Conditions were just about perfect, but, as always, there has to be a snag in paradise. In this case it was the tiny flies, about an eighth of an inch long, that loved to feed on humans. As long as we were moving these weren’t too much a problem, but when we came back to the boat ramp and started to dismantle the kayak, they descended in their thousands. I’d put my head into the kayak body and be covered with flies, in my ears, up my nose, over my eyelids. Oh yes, and they bite, like thousands of tiny needles, leaving red splotches just under the skin.
As I found out later in the evening each one of those bites was an itching centre, and by next morning, I was a mass of itchy bumps. .
Next.