Savannah, Georgia St. Patrick's Day Weekend 2020 was a bit more subdued than prior years. It was the year of the great Coronavirus Pandemic. Warnings from China had been in the news for maybe two months. The US had seen a few cases on the west coast and travel restrictions, school closures and business closures were just starting to trend. Still, the party went on in Savannah so all of us loaded up in the van that Derek rented and headed to the party. None of us contracted COVID-19 from that weekend. We were fortunate.
Let me recap the trip over the next couple of pages...
I actually flew into Savannah early for this year's trip. My flight landed early on Tuesday the 10th. Flights had been cheaper and I could work from Derek and Jessica's house during the week. The picture above is from Saturday, the 14th. Saturday was the day we rented the van and went to Savannah to party all afternoon and night. There was plenty of fun before Saturday though including dinners, drinks and golf. Let me recap the highlights.
I went out for dinner with Derek, Bernie and Manny on Tuesday night. We ate outside at the bar. This was before COVID-19 mandated all restaurants and bars shut down due to virus spread and I remember it was very crowded. With the information we have now (as of 4/2/2020 with 238k infected and 5k deaths), we should not have been eating out in crowded restaurants like that. Still, at the time, it was great to get back together with the Okatie Park Crew. Here are a couple of pics from the outside bar. Manny joined us later.
Derek, Bernie, Noah
On Wednesday (3/11/20), I went golfing with Bernie and Derek at Chechessee Creek Club - a very nice golf club not too far from Okatie Park. Bernie works there and got us on the course. There was not a lot of golfers there at all. We had a fantastic time on the course. Much appreciation to Bernie for sponsoring us. I had not played golf in over a year so I was plenty bad. No worries. I did not keep score.
Friday, Michael joined us and he, Derek and I had dinner downtown Beaufort. It was great weather and a pretty impressive display of the moon as Saturn.
And then Saturday, we all loaded up in Derek's rental van and headed downtown Savannah. I'll put those pictures on the next page.
Saturday, pre-St. Patrick's Day Weekend, was stellar. We all had an amazing time. The weather was perfect. The crowds were light (perhaps the only plus for COVID-19). The picture above is before we left Derek and Jessica's house. This is on their back porch. The roof had just been added before I arrived and we did have several good nights sitting under it, especially one night when it rained.
Here are some back porch pictures:
Here are van pics...
Here are Savannah pics:
I did have another golf day on Sunday with Derek, Bernie and Michael at Bernie's club. We had a fun day hitting balls from the driving range and then a quick 9 holes before Michael had to leave.
A couple of other highlights from the trip included Michael's girlfriend losing her passport on her flight over to an African safari (she found it); Bree had some issues wrapping up the night from Savannah (she did not break any windows in the van, but she did scratch Derek's neck a bit) and I flew on half empty planes from Savannah to Atlanta to Pensacola (a little foreboding there). Also, a huge thanks to Marlowe for picking me up at the Savannah airport on Tuesday and taking me to his parents house while I waited for Derek to pick me up once he got off work. It was good walking the two big poodles around the alligator ponds and meeting his parents and watching 'Moulin Rouge'.
St. Patrick's Day Weekend 2019 was another great trip. I am sitting at the Savannah Airport waiting on my flight back to Pensacola so I figured I'd start recounting the trip. I flew up early this time because airfare was a lot cheaper flying in on Wednesday rather than Friday and Derek, Jessica and Nancy had room for me at their place.
My flight's boarding. Be back in a minute...
I'm just now getting back to writing about this trip for St. Patrick's Day, like two weeks later. Whew, time flies!
I worked from Derek, Jessica and Nancy's house all day Thursday and Friday. Thursday late afternoon, I went with everyone to Oliver's tee-ball practice. He's only three years old so much of the time is spent playing in the red dirt. One little guy spent most of his time rolling in the red dirt, but it was a great way to spend the afternoon and then we all had pizza for dinner at a restaurant on Beaufort's waterfront. Great weather for it.
Friday, I worked from home again and helped Derek put together a new tent he had just ordered - big enough for 12 people. Its huge! It took us a little more time than the Instant Assembly of 2-minutes or less, but we got it done and will beat the assembly time going forward.
Friday was also the big dinner night for all of us at the Mansion on Forsyth Park in Savannah. There were twelve of us (enough to fill the new tent) and we all filled up a large dining table in a semi-private dining room. The restaurant was not too full so our loud crowd did not cause too much of a commotion. The food and the service were impeccable. I recommend this place to anyone in Savannah.
Here is the Mansion on Forsyth's Park video on YouTube. The restaurant's name is 700 Drayton.
One of the couples got into an argument after dinner. It got so bad that Derek, Nancy and Jessica had to leave to take them home. I stayed around Savannah with Michael, Marlowe and CJ. We had a great time and almost found Michael a wife. I tried. I really did. I even gave him beads for him to give to her. She left early though. Her loss.
Saturday was our big party day. Derek rented a full-sized party van for 14 people and we pretty much filled it up. I will never volunteer to sit in the front passenger seat and be DJ again. We got to Savannah just after the parade so the traffic was mainly leaving Savannah at that point and found a great parking spot in front of a wine bar. We had a great time on the balconies at the Hyatt and then Marlowe had a great street party going on outside of his townhouse... of course, when we got there, there was zero evidence of a street party. To Marlowe's credit though, I did see a facebook video later of the party that had just cleared out by the time we got there. None the less, by the time we got there, there was nothing going on - not even food. Luckily, there was a restaurant/bar right across the intersection from Marlowe's place so we all ate and drank there for a bit before venturing back out into St. Patrick's Eve Savannah.
It was a great time seeing old friends and making new friends. Let's do it again next year!
Two pics from putting up the BIG TENT behind the house:
