Touring Savannah: Ogeechee Canal

Several weeks back, our travels took us to the Savannah-Ogeechee Barge Canal. I guess it's a good thing that David shares my passion for all things historical. And if we got a little bird watching in, then that would be icing on the cake (Spoiler alert: no birds of note were spotted, which was disappointing).

The canal was constructed back in the 1820s and served as a channel to move lumber, cotton, and other wares through the Savannah area. You can read here for more information on the canal.

It wasn't the prettiest of days and after lots of rain, some of the trails weren't very accessible. However, we still got to see most of what the canal had to offer.

It was a very beautiful walk down by the canal. However, when we got to the end we hit a bit of a problem:

 The last little part of the trail that leads you to a viewing point of the Ogeechee River was underwater.

Here is David's sad face when we couldn't go get a good look.

However, we eventually found another trail that we could access the river.

We encountered some wildlife on our hike that I would have preferred not to.

This little guy about gave me a heart attack. He's just a red-bellied water snake and harmless, but still. I don't do snakes.

David spotted this frog just hanging out. I can handle him. The snake, not so much.

After exploring the canal, we wandered over to the gopher tortoise habitat.

We have these at my parent's house, and I've always loved these slow moving guys

He wouldn't come out of his hole, but we still got a little glimpse of him.

Well folks- that wraps up the riveting trip to the canal. We are making our way around Savannah, one park at a time!

Playing Catch-Up

Get ready for an epic (and rare apparently) blog post today. I have lots to catch up on ! It's nothing too exciting. Just a few pictures that I had on my phone.

1.  My nephew celebrated his 6th birthday. I can't believe he is that old. Time surely does fly!

2. I never shared my Halloween decorations. Not that it is anything special, but I did add some LED stick lights to my ferns to add some extra light out there for the trick-or-treaters. 

And speaking of those massive ferns. I had to bring them in when it turned a little bit cooler and it is like a jungle in my kitchen. 

Please ignore the plates on the wall. I am missing one that I need to hang and some other stuff that needs to go up there as well to balance everything out. But seriously- look how big those ferns are and how they dwarf that bench! Thanks Miracle Grow. 

3. Oyster weather! I have really taken advantage of these cooler temperatures and the fact that it is perfect oyster weather. The other weekend, David and I went and grabbed 1/2 bushel and went to town! We set up the TV outside to watch some football and it was perfect. 

This past weekend, my brother, his wife, and Barrett came and stayed with me and we got some more oysters and watched some more football on the patio. 

In other oyster-related news: David and I were invited to an oyster roast in Savannah a couple of months back. Guess the Charleston/coastal/northern communities don't eat raw oysters, they roast them. I'll take mine raw. Thank you very much (or fried of course, I am still a southern girl!). But it was in a great place on the marsh on Wilmington Island. 

David wanted to stay on the dock forever and watch the sting rays. It was pretty fascinating to watch them. 

4. The other weekend we had a girls weekend in Destin. My mom, her sister (whom I refer to as Birdie and you can too), and my cousin Stacey had a great time soaking in some south Walton County, FL goodness. 

Now living in Georgia, I really miss being able to slide over to Destin anytime. I used to sneak off to Destin during college on my breaks to do a little shopping. It was great! Or Stacey and I would meet up there to do our annual Christmas shopping together. Sigh...dang you , Georgia! :-) 

On Saturday we drove over to Seaside for lunch and ate at Bud and Alley's. It's great if for none other than the dachshund on their sign :-D

We ate up on the top deck and the weather was absolutely divine!

5. Now for the one thing I have done that I was truly the most excited about! First off, there was a whole lotta documentary watching this last couple of weeks. 

That's right!!!! SQUEAL!! The Eagles concert was this past week!

Image via

My brother Brad and I drove up to Birmingham, AL to meet David. We stayed with David's sweet, sweet sister, Frances. We had a blast! It's always fun to be in the car with your sibling for 5+ hours, right? Ha! He's a mess for sure. I brought my ipad with me so that he could watch the Eagles documentary on the way up there (it is almost right at 4 hours long) to get him pumped up. We got to Birmingham in the middle of rush hour. I was driving. He looks up does, a little scream, tries to push his imaginary breaks and then proclaims that he is just going to focus on his movie and not look up. He didn't want to see death before him on the road. Ha! I'm not that bad a driver I assure you. 

Frances took us for a little tour of Birmingham while we were there. We went and saw the Vulcan, which was pretty neat. 

The views were absolutely stunning from up there. We had a fabulous time and I was so happy to get to see the Eagles before they break up again. Ha!

6. I decided that it wasn't too early to start getting into the Christmas spirit. I pulled out my Christmas wreath. It looks so itty bitty in this picture. Thanks iphone :-)

7. And just because it wouldn't be a post of mine until one of my little boys showed their face, here is JJ and his special friend. 

He and Brutus have fought over this stuffed dachshund more than anything else. Guess they just love him that much. 

Well- here's to the weekend! Hope it's a great one!

Savannah Wiener Dog Races

Picture this: 150 dachshunds running around downtown Savannah, GA

In your mind's eye, I'm sure you can picture the chaos. But I lived the reality. This past weekend, the annual Wiener Dog Race was held for Oktoberfest in downtown Savannah. I entered the boys for fun. To say that I did it. To check it off my "bucket" list. But to be honest, it was quite overwhelming for both me and the boys! They aren't used to being out and about too much and there were so many people and so many other dogs. But the good news is that most everyone were doxie owners, so they know their temperament and didn't get offended when Brutus or JR went postal on them or their dog. They were slightly stressed to say the least. But I tried my best to keep them in "competition mode" (haha!).

We had to be downtown at 8:30 to register for the 10:00 am race. So we had plenty of time to sit by the river and get some good people and dachshund  watching in. I can honestly say, I have now seen every shape, size, and color of dachshunds there are.

Headed downtown and to get their run on

The dog track

After what seemed an eternity of me worrying about my dogs biting random little kids and dreaming of the impending lawsuits that would in turn follow, it was finally time to run in their heat.

Runners 30 & 31

My main man/dog wrangler getting ready

In the shoot they go!

David may have given them a little push out the gate :-)

And they are off! Look at my boys go. JR is in the purple bandanna and Brutus is in the light blue one.

Photo Courtesy of The Savannah Morning News

Across the finish line they go! And straight to the lady next to me with the treat bag, Go figure!

And how did they do??? Well, my predictions were correct. JR CAME IN 1ST and Brutus was a close second!! 

I am so proud of them!! Because JR won his heat, that meant we had to stick around until the finals. And this is where JR got robbed. There were 150 dogs entered and there were 15 heats and only 10 can run for the trophy and guess what?  His time wasn't fast enough to qualify for the final championship run, so he didn't get to run again. I was so disappointed! I knew that if he would have ran, he totally would have won. He is still the champion in my heart.

All in all, it was a fun experience and I may do it again next year- but with only one dog to chase around and not two. 

As you can see, the ride home was much different that then ride there! I had two tired little pups that raced their hearts out. 

BIG NEWS!!

Sike! Just kinda somewhat news. Weird news would probably be more descriptive of the contents of this post.

Oktoberfest is about to kick off this weekend in Savannah. I am pretty excited. Only for one main reason- I have entered the boys in the wiener dog races. And if you don't believe me, believe the tweet:

I doubt Brutus will do anything. He will be too busy trying to fight one of the other dogs to run. Unless they throw a ball to get them to run- then he would run his little heart out. I am gonna put my money down on JR. I think he's going to be the Wiener Winner!

I will let you know how it turns out. {I'm sure the 3 people that read this blog will be waiting with bated breath.} Should be very interesting!

Hey StringBean and Bo-Peep - we're out to get you!

Auf Wiedersehen!

Surprise, Surprise!

Ok, this really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this point. But David and I checked out yet {another} wildlife area this past weekend in Savannah. This one I was really fond of, because you drove through. So no walking needed. That's my kind of wildlife refuge! It is the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and it's actually in South Carolina.

I won't bore you with all the details, but it was beautiful! We saw tons of gators and some birds of course! I'll just let the pictures do the talking.



Anhinga aka snake bird



Black bellied whistling-ducks (a rare sighting for this area!)

Great Blue Heron

American Alligator

Two {love!} doves

The rarest species of them all!

Green Heron

Wood Storks

Purple Gallinule

Belted Kingfisher

Tri-Color (formerly Louisiana} Heron

Thankfully the weather held out and we were able to get out of the house a little bit. I couldn't convince David to go up to Hilton Head to the outlets with me, so I guess the Wildlife Refuge was a good compromise.

Maybe one day I will update the blog with something other than birding pictures :-D