Wubie stalking his favorite play ball

Here is Wubie stalking his favorite play ball.
He races from one end of the RV to the other batting it around.

The other day Teri was walking with him in the campground and someone saw them saying to Teri: "What do you feed that cat?"

With all his hair he looks like a small lion when he walks on the leash.

OLD SAVANNAH, SKIDAWAY, AND TYBEE ISLANDS

English General James Oglethorpe named Georgia after King George II, and founded its first city: Savannah in 1733. He developed 23 squares where colonists gathered for social outings.
Rum, lawyers and slavery were forbidden - for a time.

Tomo-chi-chi, the Yamacraw chief granted the new arrivals permission to settle Savannah on the river bluff. Clearly the either naive, greedy or stupid chief did not know he was dealing with the death of his people.

The first two pictures are fuzzy because I was taking them with the cell phone camera - had dead batteries in the camera.

This is one of the many squares in the compact old city. Near this monument there is a small plaque indicating that at one time this spot was the tomb of Tomo-chi-chi, but at some point it was razed to put this monument to a Revolutionary war veteran.

This is one of the many city streets. Live oaks form a tunnel over most of the streets. Spanish moss drapes the branches of live oak and crape myrtle everywhere.

Teri at another of the squares. The old city is compact and we walked by a good number of the squares.

Some of the houses have ornate ironwork which in some cases was imported from England.

The old Savannah riverfront used to be full of cotton warehouses and services for seamen. Nowadays it is a turist place full of restaurants, t-shirt and souvenir shops, and tour guides. There is a great deal of industry but it is out of sight further up the river.


We took the Paddlewheeler Riverboat tour and were fortunate enough to sit in the shaded outdoor upper deck in a nice dining table. A couple of part-time visitors from Pennsylvania asked to join us at the table.

The tour took us upriver in front of large ocean going tanker ships and other cargo ships.
The one below was of Greek registry.



We also passed a luxury yatch production center. These beauties are sleek and luxurious transoceanic cruisers with all the modern communications and navigation electronics.

Skidaway Island has large tidal hammocks that separate it from the mainland.

Skidaway island is a sandy barrier island on the East side of the Intracoastal Waterway South of Savannah. We were staying at the State Park there. To get to it we had to go over the "Moon River" of Johnny Mercer song fame.


This is Teri biking in the State Park. It is a beautiful park dense with Spanish moss draped live oak, palmetto, and pine forests, and also - unfortunately - enough standing water to be a mosquito paradise.

Here she is gaining on a mosquito squadron after her.

Tybee Island is the Savannah area beach 18 miles East of the old city.

You can see the relative position of Tybee (means "salt" in the native language) and Skidaway where we were staying with our RV.

HUNTINGTON BEACH STATE PARK - SC

After experiencing Fall in Pennsylvania we went back to the warm waters of South Carolina near Murrells Inlet. Huntington Beach is one of our favorite campgrounds. We can hear the surf from our bedroom and it is close enough that if we want we can take our notebook computers to the beach and still be within range of our RV's Wireless internet.

This is the short boardwalk separating the campground from the beach.

The beach is uncrowded, wide, and clean. The fine white sand packs hard enough for us to ride the bikes on it.
There are many very nice beach homes nearby. Plenty of good shopping and numerous seafood restaurants. Everywhere you see large live oaks with branches decorated with Spanish Moss.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S FALLINGWATER MASTERPIECE

While staying near Somerset Pennsylvania this fall we took a side trip in the Laurel Highlands to Frank Lloyd Wrights architectural masterpiece.


Here it is in each season.

Construction began in 1936, and ended with the completion of the guest house in 1939.


The Kaufmann family used Fallingwater in all seasons as a weekend or vacation home until the 1950's, when their son inherited it.

The Kauffmans owned a department store in Pittsburg. When we went to Pittsburg we saw a Kauffmans department store still operating in a local shopping center. The Kauffmans took the train to the nearby town of Oligopyle where they were picked up in a car by their Fallingwater caretaker and driven up the mountain to the weekend retreat.

The servant quarters is a complex of buildings up the side of the creek canyon behind the main house.

An interesting thing about the house is that everything inside and out, including all furniture, floors wall decor, lighting, etc. except for the kitchen - was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The house gives you a feeling of cozyness while at the same time making you experience the outdoors surrounding you. It is fantastic.

Wright responded to the family's love for a waterfall on Bear Run, a rushing mountain stream in Western Pennsylvania. Mimicking a natural pattern established by its rock ledges, Wright placed the house over the falls in a series of cantilevered concrete "trays," anchored to masonry walls made of the same Pottsville sandstone as the rock ledges. Although the house rises over 30' above the falls, strong horizontal lines and low ceilings help maintain a sheltering effect. Almost as much floor space is taken up by outdoor terraces as indoor rooms.

I think this is a design masterpiece, but we have to be clear - it is no engineering masterpiece.

An engineer must achieve excellence in three dimensions: design, economics, and operational survivability or quality.

Frank Lloyd Wright had only to achieve excellence in the first of these. He was building for people for whom cost was no object, and he exceeded materials design parameters so that within the first 25 years, the building was collapsing and had to be restored at a cost of 11 million dollars.