Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning\u00a0 Flower Moon<\/p>\n
The Silver Meteor delivered me to Savannah, Georgia at 6:30 a.m. this morning.\u00a0 The train station was not, as I had imagined, in downtown Savannah but well out of town, about 20 miles from the airport where I had to pick up my rental car.<\/p>\n
Lester, the sleeping car attendant, woke me at 6:15.\u00a0 I wake up slowly so I had not yet begun to take in the whole world and there I was in the humid Savannah morning.\u00a0 Kudzu vines enveloped trees, creating a tree-shaped outline made of the vine.\u00a0 Spanish moss hangs from trees and there are low places and swamps dotted throughout.<\/p>\n
The drive to Hilton Head takes about an hour and I surprised myself by driving straight to the Westin.\u00a0 A navigational highlight of the day followed by many wrong turns later on this oddly organized island.<\/p>\n
Instead of municipal governments the Island has plantations.\u00a0 The Westin, for example, is in Port Royal Plantation on the heel of the Island.\u00a0 When Kate and I took off for lunch at Crazy Crab, we had to go to Sea Pine Plantation on the other end of the ocean side of Hilton Head.\u00a0 Sea Pines has a gate and charged us $5! to get in.\u00a0 That explained the Crazy part.<\/p>\n
After proving several times that finding the Westin was a fluke, we made it back where I took a long nap and Kate went to get educated.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 Atlantic,at least today, is gray and has a forbidding aura, quite different from the placid Pacific I know better from Hawai’i.<\/p>\n
Kate and I walked the beach and while.\u00a0 We came upon a beached jelly fish.\u00a0 It felt like jelly when I poked it with my finger.\u00a0 The lifeguard said they were cannonball jellies or jelly balls.\u00a0 They don’t sting.<\/p>\n
I learned about sea oats and the protective nature of the dunes on which they grow.\u00a0 The dunes are not play areas and their vegetation has legal protection since they hold they dunes together and the dunes buffer the insistent work of the waves.<\/p>\n
The Westin serves a grits and gravy dish with flash seared shrimp that made me happy.\u00a0 Low country cooking is tasty.<\/p>\n
This whole area, the low country, gets its name from the era of the plantations.\u00a0 Early on white settlers discovered malaria made growing the indigo and rice crops impossible them.\u00a0 Thanks to the sickle cell trait, however, many Africans have total or some immunity.<\/p>\n
Hurray!\u00a0 During the growing season white plantation owners would retreat to the highlands of South Carolina and leave the plantation in the care of their slaves.\u00a0 The slaves worked the land, brought in the crop and got crummy accommodations, no wages and oppression as thanks.<\/p>\n
It is more than a little peculiar that this Island organizes itself around the notion of plantations.\u00a0 I find it distasteful.<\/p>\n
Over and out from the Atlantic Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning\u00a0 Flower Moon The Silver Meteor delivered me to Savannah, Georgia at 6:30 a.m. this morning.\u00a0 The train station was not, as I had imagined, in downtown Savannah but well out of town, about 20 miles from the airport where I had to pick up my rental car. Lester, the sleeping car attendant, woke … Continue reading Hilton Head Island<\/span>