Taking A Sunday Drive #26

♪ Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee, never knew how much that muddy water meant to me. But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was, a lot about livin' and a little 'bout love. ♪
Yes, I was thinking about that song as we crossed the Chattahoochee River from Florida into Georgia two years ago. Our previous dip into Georgia was during the fall trip of 2008 when we visited Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga, TN. (All my photos from there were digital and lost during a computer crash.)
This part of our 2014 SE trip wasn't going to include much more of Georgia, just an overnight outside Savannah and then a brief tour of that city.

This stretch of highway definitely gave me the feeling of being in the South.

Driving along the cobblestones of Bay Street next to the river looking up toward the historic business district.

Of course I was looking for the cemetery from John Berendt's novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but was happy enough to find the one in Johnson Square.
Johnson Square was the first and is the largest of Savannah's original squares.

A pair of Mockingbirds at the base of one of the live oaks found throughout the square.

Bud at the memorial to Button Gwinnett, Georgia's Governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a candidate for a brigadier general position to lead the 1st Regiment in the Continental Army, but lost out to Lachlan McIntosh. He was killed in a duel with McIntosh in 1777.

Johnson Square was important to the early settlers of Savannah. It was where they went for water, to post public notices and to visit as they baked their bread in one of the public brick ovens.
It is also where South Carolina's secession from the Union was read in 1860. Of all the squares we could have happened upon, this one turned out to be the best.