Yesterday, Wednesday.... it rained....... all day! 


    Today, Thursday, on the other hand, it was nice outside. A little cool overall, but bright and sunny and inviting. Just right for being out and about. I spent most of the morning just hanging out here at the trailer. I was hoping it would warm up and be really nice, but it never got much above 55 degrees, so I finally just decided to head out anyway.


   My destination for today was Tybee Island where the Savannah River opens out onto the Atlantic Ocean. It is only about 15 miles from where I am camped so it didn't take long to get there even though there was a little bit of road work going on. My first stop was the light house at the north east tip of the Island. First established in the early 1700's, there have been 4 structures built as navigation aids in this general area. The first was a simple wooden structure without a light, even though it is often called a lighthouse, it functioned as a simple navigation aid. It was built to close to the ocean however; and it was soon destroyed.


    The second was built better and taller, and did have a rudimentary light, but it was also built to close to the beach and was soon washed away too.


    The third one was built in 1773  in the present location and served right up to the Civil War. It was built mostly of brick and had a system of 16 separate lights at the top of the tower. It worked well until the war when the Confederate's abandoned Tybee Island to the Union forces. As they left though, they lit a fire inside the lighthouse destroying the wooden and steel steps and making it unusable to the Union army.


    The fourth iteration was built in 1867, soon after the war ended. All but the lower 60 feet of the third lighthouse tower was removed and an additional 85 feet of new tower was added to it. It has a long history after that with different exterior paint jobs, different kinds of lights and evening different owners.


    It is still being used as an official aid to navigation, and the light is still taken care of by the Coast Guard, although the lighthouse structure as well as the surrounding buildings are now owned by the Tybee Island Historical Society.


    I spent a couple of hours there wandering around and looking at all of the displays and buildings. Unfortunately they had picked this month to repaint the actual lighthouse tower, so it was actually closed on the inside so I couldn't climb to the top like I usually do. I got some pretty good pictures though, so I'll be posting a few at some point in the near future.


    Directly across the road from the lighthouse are the remains of one of Fort Screven's concrete gun batteries. A place where large coastal defense guns have been placed for more than 100 years in order to protect the coast, and in particular, the entrance into the Savannah River, from outsiders in the times of war. Not much is left of the original concrete structures, but one part of one battery was still in good enough shape that the Tybee Island Museum was actually placed inside it's interior concrete halls and rooms. A pretty neat little museum with lots of old pictures of Tybee Island in the late 1800's and later. It appears that it was a real swinging place at one time during the 20's and 30's.


    So all of that took up about 6+ hours and my stomach was now complaining about not having any real lunch. Headed off for some fast food and then headed on back to the trailer. If the weather stays nice I'll head back out that way tomorrow and check out some other things that looked interesting. Will just have to wait until morning to see what the weather is like.