June 28 - Charleston, SC - Savannah, GA - Manning, SC 250Miles

When General Sherman made his Civil War march across Georgia, burning and destroying any thing in his army's path, he ended up in Savannah.  However, he spared Savannah, so many of its beautiful homes of the time still survive.

In the 1950's and 1960's the move began to the suburbs, leaving many of the large and stately homes turned into apartments, boarded up, or torn down.  It went downhill until the area was a slum.

Then in the late 1970's a first home was saved by eight women who formed a company to restore it rather than let it be turned it into a parking lot.  From there, an upsurge of restoration started, small at first, and then grew rapidly.  Some of those beautiful homes now sell in the millions of dollars.

Here's Norm with a classic example of what has been done to bring these homes back to very large single-family homes.  This is only one of many, many of these huge homes of the bygone wealthy that have been restored to original colors, trim, and the wonderful columns which were popular before and after the Civil War.

Here's Deane with an example of a building of two individually owned homes. 

 This one was built in the mid 1850's.  There are many of these restored, as well as many "row houses", nicely restored.

We rode down from Charleston to Savannah in the morning (110 miles), spent the better part of the day in the Old Town Savannah (including a great lunch of Savannah River shrimp), and then rode up to Manning, South Carolina (140 miles).  A good share of the ride to Manning had us riding in the rain.  Not only in the rain, but on Interstate 95, a major road for trucks.  We finally rode out of the rain, after maybe 100 miles in it.  Ah well, tomorrow will be better, as we ride up now to the lower edge of Virginia.  (Boy, Deane and Norm do get around.)  In the next couple of days, we'll report on why we are going to Virginia.

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