Ruby Here

[Cathy T]

Oh I am so jealous!! I would love to do all of the sightseeing you all get to do. Savannah and Charleston are two of the places I would most like to visit. Looks like you all had a great time and were quite tuckered out by day's end. Can't wait to hear about your alligator encounter I love that your stories tell us so much about history too!

[Rj Mac]

so adorable, just want to reach into monitor and scoop her up!!!!!

[Cleo's Person]

Ruby and Sydney, Delighted you ladies are back online. I love to hear all about your adventures. Looking forward to the next installment.

[Sydney]

Ruby and Sydney here,

I've got to hurry, because Mom is downstairs and I still have to tell you more about Savannah and Charleston. When I last left you, I had mentioned a little run in with an alligator. It all happened when we drove out to see Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island right outside Savannah. Fort Pulaski was an Army fort that was Robert E. Lee's first engineering project as a Lieutenant right of West Point. It was started in 1820 and finished in 1847. During the Civil War, it was taken by the Confederate Army and was thought to be invincible. However, Union artillery nearly destroyed the fort with a new invention called rifled cannons which could hit the fort from several miles away. On April 11, 1862, after only thirty hours of bombardment and with one corner of the fort gone, Confederate troops inside Fort Pulaski surrendered to Union forces on Tybee Island.

Here we are next to one of the big Confederate cannons inside the fort.



Now the alligator. As we were leaving, we crossed the moat that runs around the outside of the fort and Sydney looked down and saw a creature in the water. She called down to it and said, "What are you?" and the creature said, "I'm a giant brown-green squirrel. "Why don't you jump in here and try to get me."�





Now you tell me whether you believe this is a giant squirrel? But, as many of you know, Sydney loves to chase squirrels. All she had to hear was the word squirrel and she started to leap into the water to chase it into any trees that might happen to be close by. Luckily I stopped her just in the nick of time by grabbing her tail just as she started to leap over the edge and said, "Now Sydney , when was the last time you ever saw a squirrel that was brown-green, swimming in the water? And oh, by the way, how many squirrels have you ever seen with teeth like that one, and with scaly skin?"� Of course, it caused her to pause for a moment and it was then that we overheard a Park Ranger tell Mom and Dad about alligators and how they eat things; things like Sydney if they could. Sydney looked at me. I looked at Sydney. Needless to say, we merely laughed at that old conniving alligator who tried to fool Sydney and I. That old alligator trick might have worked on a fish or a turtle, but you can't fool two intelligent Cavaliers like us, well at least not one intelligent red head Cavalier. Thank goodness I was there. Sydney owes me one of her treats. Someone's coming I think. I'll be right back.


Ruby and Sydney in Virginia

[Cathy T]

Whew....it's a good thing you are way smarter than that nasty old alligator!! And a good thing your sissy was looking out for you.

[Sydney]

Ruby and Sydney Here,

Hey, hey everyone. Sorry about that last little delay, but I came as close to being caught as ever. As you are aware, I was telling you about our adventure with the alligator at Fort Pulaski and I was typing away and Mom walked in on me. I had to think fast and luckily I had one of my squeaky toys right next to the laptop. So I quickly grabbed it and jumped down and gave her my best Cavalier pity stare. I made her think I had just climbed into the chair to get my toy. Good thing she didn't notice the computer was on and I was logged onto Cavalier Talk but that was a little too close for comfort for me. From now on either Sydney or I wall have to keep a lookout while one of us is on the computer.

However, I digress so back to my updates on our most recent trip. After Fort Pulaski, we drove back into Savannah. Savannah was the first settlement in the new colony of Georgia and served as the capital for a very long time before the capital was permanently moved to Augusta in 1786. Here we are in front of the old capital building, now City Hall, at the end of Bull Street. Sounds like the perfect street for politicians.





Savannah is located right on the Savannah River and was famous for exporting cotton during the 18th and 19th century. We stopped for a short break while touring along River Street, where most of the old cotton warehouses have now been turned into shops and restaurants and snapped this picture while we watched the cargo ships come into port.





While we were on River Street, we came across this statue called "The Waving Girl".





Why's it called the waving girl? Simple. It's because she's waving silly. No not really. Here's the story.

Just after the Civil War in 1868, a girl was born at Cockspur Island near Savannah. The child was named Florence Martus, the daughter of an ordnance sergeant at Fort Pulaski. From an old stone pier on the north shore of Cockspur Island young Florence first saw the passing ships coming and going to Savannah with cargoes to and from the farthest corners of the globe. The small child was fascinated by these ships and waved her handkerchief as they passed by. Sailors on the ships often waved back.

A few years later Florence went to live with her brother, a light keeper, in a small cottage close by the riverbank, about five miles up river from Fort Pulaski. From this time on she waved at every ship that passed with her dog at her side "a table cloth or towel by day, a lantern by night". (Note: Although the dog in the statue isn't a Cavalier, we think her dog was one of us. After all, only a Cavalier would so joyously welcome every visitor every day for so many years.) For more than 44 years she never missed a ship, and each ship, as it passed, returned her salute with three blasts of the whistle. Many stories were told of this small girl, who finally grew to be a white-haired old lady. Florence Martus passed away in 1943, but her efforts live on in the stories and legends of the Waving Girl of Savannah and a statue was erected to her memory on River Street in Savannah.

After leaving River Street, we then walked through the old Colonial Park Cemetery. During the American Civil War, Union troops camped out in the cemetery and removed some of the headstones. After the war, no one knew where the headstones belonged so they simply stacked them up along the wall at the back of the cemetery. Seems a little sad to Sydney and me:



Anyway, Savannah was beautiful with lots of pretty houses and beautiful parks and we hope you can all visit here one day. All the trees had lots and lots of Spanish Moss hanging from their limbs which was pretty like this driveway to a nearby plantation.




Or this park in Savannah.




Oh yeah, before I forget, here we are in front of the house made famous by the book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and was also in the movie "Glory". Sydney and I haven't read the book but we'll have to now. We have seen the movie "Glory" though and in the movie the house was supposed to be in Boston. Have you ever seen such a beautiful big palm like the one by the front porch ever survive a Boston Winter?






Dad's speech at the conference was over and we were off for home, but not before a little side trip to Charleston to see the sites and also buy some sweet grass baskets from a very special lady who'll we'll introduce you to in our next post. See you soon.

Bark On!

Ruby and Sydney in Virginia

[Cathy T]

Great pictures! Savannah looks beautiful. Maybe one day I'll get there! Thanks for the posting of the picture of house from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil....I just loved that movie!!

[Sarah J]

Love the pic of the pup in the basket. So adorable!!

[Scouty girl]

Rudy and Sydney,

As usual I always enjoy your posts. Thanks so much for sharing those great picture of Savannah with us.

[Sydney]

Ruby Here,

Hmmmmmmmm. Let me see, where did I leave off. Oh, yes, we had just left Savannah and were heading to Charleston. We stopped in Charleston because Mom loves sweetgrass baskets and we have a very special friend that we want you to meet. But first you have to know something about sweetgrass baskets before you can truly appreciate our newest friend.

Sweetgrass baskets are made from a marsh grass that smells so fresh and sweet, people call it sweetgrass. Baskets are made by twisting sweetgrass into long ropes and then coilong them together into a basket. Making sweetgrass baskets has been part of the Charleston community of Mount Pleasant for more than 300 years. Brought to the area by slaves who came from West Africa, basket making is a traditional art form which has been passed on from generation to generation. Today, it is one of the oldest art forms of African origin in the United States.

Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, an old village and modern suburb on the north side of Charleston Harbor, enjoys the distinction of being the only place where this particular type of basket making is practiced. Here, the descendents of slaves from West Africa continue the tradition.

Here is a close up of one of these very beautiful baskets:





But the art form is in danger because sweetgrass is declining and disappearing due to the ever increasing private development of the coastal islands and marshlands where sweetgrass grows. And basket making is not easy. Rigorous craftsmanship and long hours of work are involved in making these baskets. Even for the most experienced basket maker, a simple design can take as long as twelve hours. A larger more complex design can take as long as two to three months. Because it takes so much work, young people are less and less interested in learning how to make these baskets and there is a danger this art form may disappear.

Now that you know something about these beautiful baskets, let Sydney and I introduce you to one of the basket makers. It was during one of Mom and Dad’s trips that they met a wonderful person by the name of Maebell Coakley. She has lived in Mount Pleasant all of her life and her and her family have been making baskets for a very long time. She is a very sweet lady and she has some of the prettiest baskets. It was our first time to meet her and since she is so sweet and treated us so well, we did something we have never done before. We let her in on our little secret about our special Cavalier talents and she was mightily impressed. At first she didn’t believe us so to prove we are truly as talented as we say we are, we waited until Mom and Dad were busy looking at baskets and then we asked Miss Coakley to pose and we snapped this picture of our new friend in front of some of her baskets in her basket stand. Of course only after she signed an oath to never divulge anything she learned about us to anyone, which caused her to laugh but she signed it anyway.




And she returned the favor by snapping this picture of us as we stayed cool on the floor of her stand.





Here Miss Coakley is signing one of Mom’s baskets so Sydney took some time out and snapped a picture of me and our friend.




We hope that you too can get to Mount Pleasant and visit with Miss Coakley and purchase one of her beautiful baskets to take home with you. Just don’t ask her about those two special Cavaliers who visited her stand and took her picture. She promised to never tell anyone about our talents. But we did promise to come and visit her again very soon.

After waving goodbye to Miss Coakley, we headed off back to Charleston. However, I've got to log off now because I got a little long winded on this post telling you about sweetgrass baskets and now my little paws hurt. In my next post we will share some pictures of Charleston.

Bark on!

Ruby and Sydney in Virginia