Life is like a box of chocolates...

Never a truer word said I think.

Two surprise deaths in the world - Michael Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett. Only yesterday Farrah was on the local news here, having finally (after 30 years in the relationship) announced she had agreed to marry her life partner.

It just brings it home again and again, that life is TOO SHORT to waste, if you haven't already had first hand experience of this fact. Get on with doing what you want!

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Woke up this morning and decided to go get a proper breakfast again. Drove 7 miles to the nearest Dennys! Fantastic.

Picked up a couple of leaflets for things to do in Savannah. One of the best ways to see the town is actually on foot, so went to book in for a walking tour. Unfortunately, the particular tour I wanted (a general tour) there was only me who signed up for it, so I had to go on the Civil War tour instead. Not my usual thing really, but it was actually quite interesting! It opened up a whole new world of history to me! Not to mention that I was in famous company. There were three of us on the tour, plus the tour guide. Brad Pitt and his wife Eva Mendez were the other couple, and Hazel was our tour guide. I'm quite sure that Hazel had personal experience of the Civil War, and had met most of the generals and political figures she talked of. She was that old. Either that, or she had been in the sun far too long, bless her. Lovely lady though. (Actually it did me a favour. She was very spritely - for an older lady - and I was struggling to keep up in the heat, 94F (34C), felt a bit light headed on a couple of occasions. Either that, or she had slipped Rohypnol into my water when I wasn't looking).

Savannah is certainly one of the nice cities to visit in America, and gives you a good insight into the past, and how America has changed in the last couple of hundred years. The architecture is a contrasting mixture of old colonial buildings, and modern concrete and clay building plonked in between - when they thought it was a good idea to rip up the old stuff and build new stuff in the 60s. Unfortunately their ideas of new buildings in the 60s, were not good ideas - and the result is a bit of a mish mash. But it is interesting! (if you like that sort of thing) and its a nice, friendly, honest, and clean place. Somewhere definitely worth visiting if you're ever in the vicinity.

Sorry - I keep getting critisised for being boring, but this is how I experience the world! I can jump out of a plane in the biggest drop zone in Europe, somewhere over Spain. I can bungee jump in England! But I can't do a Civil War Waking Tour of Savannah in England! Oh no, you have to be here for that!

One of the other interesting factoids that I learned, was that during the Civil War, the buildings all had a concrete facade put over them, covering all of the windows, thereby making the building look like one big concrete slab. (They have replicated this well with the 60s buildings, but not sure whether it was intentional...). It was only more recently, when the concrete facades were removed, that the windows were discovered on a lot of these buildings - and the windows kind of make the design really.

Savannah is also famous for its squares. These are sections of land interspersed with the buildings, which are full of trees, benches and usually have a monument of one war or another at their centre. They make the place interesting and give some relief from the heat under the trees. It has 21 squares (24 originally). One of which is Chippewa Square, where the famous scene from Forrest Gump was filmed. The bench where Forrest sat to give his pearls of wisdom is not there - it has been replaced by a flower bed, and there is little evidence that Hollywood had ever visited. See the photos. The other fact about the movie was that traffic flow was diverted in the opposite way around the square (which is more of an oval). Not sure why this was, and will probably never know.

So far, this region feels like real America, not the tourist sort you get in Florida (to be fair, if I lived in Florida, I'd get pretty sick of the British tourists, and their "tipping, what's that? I'm not paying 15%" / "this place is too big" / "this place is too brash" / "its not like England" closed off mindset (but yet they still come over here?) (yes we are not all like that, but some unfortunately are)) its more a genuine American place, where real people live and work, and enjoy their lives. Like Buxton is to Brits. Or Wakefield. (Only a little bigger). This is where you would come (and I'd include Charleston in this as well) to experience the proper, down to earth, good old fashioned America, a little off the beaten tourist track for us - although Savannah is a tourist town much more so than Charleston, I haven't met foreign tourists like me yet).

Liking this traveling thing though, I'm seeing a lot in a short time - and seeing everything I want to.

Fuel Used: 1 Hartland Scramble, 2.1 litres of water.

Spanky's for dinner again tonight. Liked it so much last night (that and the small fact there is very little other choice in a 7 mile radius of here, plus drinking several budlights, you gotta only be a short weave away from the hotel in the big truck). Special Pizza. Hmmm. Legendary. Unfortunately as I couldn't wait for it to be made, thought I'd order an appetizer. Hot bread and cheese dip. It was two baguettes of bread and a whole vat of that warm melted cheese, which is not really melted cheese at all. Unfortunately, it smelled delicious, and after the first bite, by stomach realised it had not eaten since 9am, and proceeded to devour the two baguettes like its throat had been cut. That meant I couldn't finish my pizza. You do realise why there are rather people though - the flavours were incredible! If we had food as good tasting as this to eat every night in England, I'd be the size of a house! If there's one thing they know how to do here, its cook. (That said, thus far I have only seen one lady who was rather too large for her struggling chair, and she was a software engineer. If I was a software engineer, I think I'd rather focus on eating too).

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One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, was part of the trip down on the Interstate 95, which is a 70mph road. I was doing around 70, when from out of nowhere a massive logging truck was up my chuff, wanting to get passed! He must have been doing closer to 80mph. And I'm not talking about a small UK rig, I'm talking a massive Kenworth with a huge pile of logs on its trailer. That's something I have yet to get used to - the trucks can go as fast, or faster than you! They ain't stuck at 56mph. The funny thing was, up his behind was the five-o! They didn't bat an eyelid. This "Arrive Alive Drive 55" thing is a myth! Should be more like "Get to where your going in one piece. Get out of the way of logging trucks!"

As I'm driving down these two lane highways (two in each direction, separated by a grassy median) I keep having visions of a cop coming the opposite directions, passing me, me looking in the rear view mirror to see him blues and twos on, doing a power slide across the median grass and mud everywhere, coming after me in a Smokey and the Bandit-esque scene... but that's not happened. Well not yet anyway...

Interstate time tomorrow, the I-95 and I-10 two roads all the way to Panama City, Florida, where I have another night in a Ramada. Not particularly looking forward to that, considering my last Ramada experience...