Tybee Island (Savannah) pt2

One of the shops in Tybee that caught my eye was this place, Ralphh Douglas Jones Fish Art. He creates fish art out of junk basically. Out the back he had a "treasure island" which was basically the collected junk area but it looked pretty cool. Out front were some of his artworks and other collected goodies. Pretty neat place.

The salt marshes on the way out

Tybee Island (Savannah) pt1

I went to Tybee Island today which about 30 mins outside of Savannah and is the eastern most point of Georgia. To get there you've got to cross a lot of bridges over the salt marshes which smell really strange. No way of describing it. Along the way there were a couple of surf shops so I'm thinking yay crashing waves and all of that but when I got there it was dead flat. I dunno if they get a lot of waves out there but was pretty. (and Aussie beaches kick ass over US beaches ;})  Spent hours walking on the beach and checking out the touristy shops that they had a row back from the beach. More about that in part 2

That's the Tybee Pier and Pavilion (although the pavilion part is on the beach)

The pavilion part of the Tybee Pier and Pavilion

there weren't many seagulls but lots of these raucous little birds. They have the most amazing blue color but of course I couldn't get close enough to show you.

A lil closer

The entrance

This made me laugh as I don't think they get many sharks out there. I did ask one of the fisherman about it as there were a few fishing on the pier and he said it was just the law that they had to display the sign but he didn't know of any sharks being caught off Tybee Pier.

There was a film crew on the beach filming a woman in a bikini for something. No idea what for.

Artwork on one of the pavilion kiosks

An owl on top of the pavilion kiosk!! yay owls :)

Ice cream and food kiosks in the pavilion

Flat flat flat flat flat

  

Neat sand texture by the pier pylon

Neat sand texture by the pier pylon

Neat sand texture by the pier pylon

A translation

This is on the back of my hotel room door. It made me giggle as it's just a drawn out polite "don't steal our stuff" notice. Although I will give them that their blankets are nice but one won't get coming home with me.

Hotel Art - Savannah, Georgia

A double treat today from Days Inn at Savannah, Georgia. Not only do we get a waaay different "artwork" but there's also a snazzy decorative border. Lovely!
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(and there's a microwave, fridge with shelves, coffee maker, do not disturb hanger and its clean yay!)

A motel walkthrough

So I had a bit of a lazy day today. When I woke up I couldn't decide what I wanted to do so I did nothing more than walk to the grocery store and back and sleep and watch crap tv. I was thinking about checking out Atlanta but the drivers here are really nuts so I dunno. The only thing I really thought of seeing is their aquarium which looks pretty good and Stone Park Mountain which is a nature reserve but I was looking at their website this morning and it's bloody expensive (about $40) just to go for a walk in the hills. So then I was thinking maybe go to their botanical gardens for a stroll and then I thought about just going back to bed because I was pretty tired or maybe just getting on the road and going to Savannah.  So instead of doing any of that I decided to do nothing today and decide again tomorrow. Good plan!

Some people have asked me what sort of places I'm staying at so I thought I'd give you a lil hotel expose since I've done nothing remarkable today. This place is a bit unusual in that it doesn't have a microwave or coffee maker (or phone or do not disturb hanger) as previously mentioned and it also has a couch, armchair, table and chair. Most places have had one of those but not all 3. But the layout is pretty much the same as most motels that I've stayed at. They have the main room with the bed then a little alcove that has the mirror, sink and bench with the toilet and shower in a separate room. This is not actually the motel that I had planned on staying in as I mixed it up with the place next door which is an America's Best Value Inn which is a chain motel because Lori the GPS got it wrong and I was already checking in when I realised. No problem, this place is $9 cheaper and the cleanliness is a lil lacking but it's not obscene. It does have a fridge although all of the shelves have been removed and there is only the sheet and the bedspread so too bad  if you get cold at night. The best place I've stayed so far was the Ramada which was only $5 more than this place but the standard was 10 times this, it was almost like a boutique hotel and I did actually take a pic of the room because I was that impressed and I've included at the bottom for comparison. Just shows the difference between chain hotels and independents.One thast thing that really intrigues me is that most of the places I've stayed had have baby puke yellow wall paint. I dunno if there was a bulk lot of baby puke yellow that they sold to all of these motels but it's very strange. This is the fourth in a row - the last place not only had baby puke yellow but a pea soup green "feature" wall. 

Midget toilet and have I ever mentioned how much I dislike showerscreens? They're always cold and clammy and always stick to me when I'm in the shower. yuck.

The Ramada at Tuscaloosa

This is what it's come to....

Whats this you ask? This is my morning coffee. The place I'm staying at today is the first one that I've stayed at that doesn't have a microwave or a coffee machine. It's actually the most roach motel place I've stayed at but its still not too bad. They also don't do free breakie and there isn't anywhere to go get coffee anywhere close BUT I do have coffee bags (like tea bags but coffee filled) and coffee creamer. BUT I don't have a coffee mug yet as I haven't needed one until now. I do, however, have a small glass dish that I use to microwave scrambled eggs and it's roughly coffee cup volume. So I just ran the tap as hot as it goes, which wasn't very hot as this place's plumbing sucks. And hey presto, coffee of sorts. Still tastes okay even if it is lukewarm in a square "cup". These are the lengths I'll go to to feed my coffee addiction.

Drive day

Well today I left Hunstville, Alabama to head on to Savannah, Georgia which is by the east coast. What should have been a easy 3 hour drive turned into a 5 hour nightmare as I hit my first real interstate traffic jam. So I was going 70mph which is about 110kms and then whammo... crawling between 5mph and 10mph. For about 30 mins!!! I was getting a lil panicky as I was almost near a 1/4 of a tank left and had noooo idea how long this thing stretched on for. Luckily for me about 20 mins into it there was an exit with a couple of gas stations so I filled it up and went back to crawl in traffic a while longer. And luckier for me I found an awesome "oldies" grunge radio station so I had awesome tunes to crawl to. So I was cranking up a lil Alice in Chains, Danzig, Foo Fighters and Stone Temple Pilots to make the time go faster.  Eventually we got to a bit of road work where they had narrowed the 2 lanes into one and as with most of the roadwork I see on the interstates there are lots of signs announcing this road work but not a whole bunch of work being done when you actually get to it and lots of pissed off motorists. After that one lil squeeze it was back to zooming along at 70 again.

And yes I'm taking a photo while driving but at 5mph its no biggie.

The other thing I saw today on the road was a dead skunk. That makes the road kill tally1 skunk, 2 dogs :(, 1 opossum, 1 deer, 1 fox and 1 something I have no idea what it was cuz it was seriously mangled.

oh and a hitchhiker (a live one not a dead one). Saw my first hitchhiker and he looked psycho so of course I stopped to give him a ride to the next town. AS IF. Someone told me that Georgians are mad drivers and they were not wrong. Out of all the states so far these guys are nuts. I hit another long and boring traffic jam coming into downtown Atlanta and people were just nuts changing lanes etc, it was chaos! They don't really pay attention to speed limits either, I kinda felt like I was back in Moscow.  It took forever to get through and of course the fucking GPS didn't make it any easier. It can be really vague sometimes like "bear left then turn right" when there's no right turn or "turn left" when its a one way right turn. I've become the u-turn queen or at least the queen for going the long way after doing a zillion turns to go the right way after missing a turn because its 5 lanes of traffic and suddenly Lori pipes up with "turn right in 300 yards" and I'm in the far left lane and it's chock a block traffic and I've got no hope of getting there in time without causing a massive accident. Anyways..... its fun, don't get me wrong cuz its been some of those wrong turns that have led me to interesting places to see. Just a lil less vaguery would be lovely. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to stay in Atlanta yet or just move on to Savannah tomorrow as I've heard some nasty things about this place so I may just do some touristy things then have a chill day before driving off the next day. Dunno and that's the beauty of it, I won't decide til tomorrow and I wake up and work out what I feel like doing. Have a great day!

Jack Daniel's distillery tour

I should have probably posted this first before the hotel art but oh well, build a bridge. I went on the Jack Daniel's distillery tour yesterday which is in Lynchburg, Tennessee (another state to tick off the list). It was only an hour from Huntsville and a pretty nice drive. Alabama really is a beautiful state. At the moment all of the trees are changing colour so it's really pretty driving around. Even on the interstates. Anyway the tour was about an hour long, and free! It was interesting to see how they do it all and how they manage to produce and sell liquor in a dry county. And Jack Daniel's name is actually Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel. I didn't know that.so I learned stuff haha. It's a working distillery so we weren't allowed to take pics on the inside of the buildings so this is just the outside stuff.

Giant sign to announce the visitor centre... yeah I missed it and turned into the service truck area and had to be turned around :( dumbass. I blame Lori (that's the name of the GPS' voice, she's the least irritating but still keeps getting me lost!)

This is the entrance hall waiting for the tour to start. I had the misfortune of turning up when 2 other tour buses did so I had to wait a while for my tour as they went every 10 mins or so. They showed us a short movie about JD first before moving on to the walking tour.

This is one of 2 onsite fire trucks, still in working order.

This is the other fire truck.

This is the onsite "iron free" natural water source that they use to make the whiskey. Its the main reason that they bought the land to establish the distillery.

This is the man himself. He is only 5'2 so they added 3 inches to the statue to make him a bit more statuesque.

This is his desk.

These are some of his musical instruments.

This is the motto that they live by.

This is the largest bottle of JD in the world, Guinness book of world records certfied.

This is the outside of the reception area.

More outside of the reception area.

And after all that I didn't actually buy and because I don't really like it ;} Apparently Australia is number 2 in their exports, number 1 being the UK. The interesting thing about the end of the tour is that there was no giftshop. They have an exstensive range of merch available on their website but don't actually have an onsite giftshop apart from being able to buy a bottle of the stuff. Unusual when you've got captive audiences like that. Oh well, I'm sure they're not struggling!