From Typical America to European America

Timon van den Berg
Jul 19, 2018
6 min read

Leaving Atlanta behind us, we entered the, what I would call, real South. The landscape changes from forest & heat to swamps, heat & amazing humidity. Not necessarily better right? But entering this region comes with a ton of benefits, which we happily share with you.

The drive from Atlanta to Charleston was the longest drive so far, with slightly more then 300 miles to cover, but the route was smooth sailing and we didn’t have much trouble. Since we only stayed in Charleston for one night, we didn’t want to arrive too late either. For me to describe Charleston would be to say that it’s a mix between the Caribbean and the south of Europe. Houses are build differently from the typical American Cities. We had an amazing stroll through the city, ending in a total 8 mile walk. Good news for both me and Hester, the body scale in the AirBnB learned us that our new travel lifestyle is doing us good.

The next morning we scheduled an early afternoon appointment in Savannah with the VW dealer, which is about 2 hours south of Charleston. The car was shaking a little and our automatic gearbox had trouble shifting gear. Little bit unlucky, but we had to camp for about 5 hours at the dealership to find out that our Drive Shaft was broken. This was a part they didn’t have in stock and it would take at least a week to do a full repair. Kindly explaining to John, the Service Manager, that he should go and have a look at the car to learn that we weren’t really from Savannah, and also not really willing to spend a week in Savannah he went back to his manager. Conclusion: the part would arrive within 2 days and then they would try to get us back on the road as soon as possible. It’s good to know that we are traveling during America’s vacation season, so we really do need to book some of our stays in advance. A delay would definitely hit our travel schedule. Luckily for us we planned 3 safe days after Savannahm so a 1 or 2 day delay would be ok.

The owner of the AirBnB where we were staying was very thoughtful and offered us additional nights against a significant discount. Sarah, thanks for that! A little promotion, if ever in Savannah contact us and we are more than happy to share her location with you.

So, after spending our first day in Savannah at the VW dealership we went downtown for dinner. Ending up in an old bar/restaurant where it was Taco Tuesday! Just to be clear, Taco any day is good for me and Hester so our dinner choice was easy.

The following morning we received an early phone call; part arrived, bring car, maybe we are done by the end of the afternoon. Hmm how did that happen, does social media pressure work on VW? Anyway, we brought the car and took the complimentary shuttle back to downtown to spend the rest of the afternoon in Savannah Downtown. We visited the old steam boat which travels up and down the Savannah River, very nice. That night we ate at a local favorite “Sandfly BBQ”. It’s not much more then a streamliner, rebuild as a diner with I guess a meat smoker somewhere in the back. We both had way too much meat and sides, but it’s definitely highly recommended. From the Sandfly we did our night stroll through Savannah downtown and we made use of the law that allows drinking on the street 😉.

The extra day we spend on the beach, a well-deserved break. Travelling is hard and consumes a lot of energy. Picked-up the car, and we soon would found out it still didn’t feel great, but we will bring it back to a VW dealership in New Orleans we decided.

With all of our VW troubles, we only had 2 extra nights before we were planning to arrive in New Orleans instead of 3. We decided that there were 2 locations we wanted to go to for sure; the Okefenokee Swamps and Mobile, Alabama (yeah yeah, long time dream of Hester 😉).

Both not sure what to expect from the Okefenokee Swamps, we were a little sceptic, since it was 38 degrees Celsius outside which isn’t ideal for a long hike or so. Driving to Okefenokee feels like you are leaving civilization although it’s only a two and halve hour drive from Savannah. At the main entrance of the Park, no Ranger at the gate, a small sign told us to come inside and pay the entrance fee. We are traveling with an annual national park card which allows you free access to most of the National Parks, so that was an easy bill to settle. We decided to take the canoe through the Swamps and paddle ourselves an 8 mile route, this instead of taking the motorized tourist boat. We paid for the canoe and received instructions about the route to follow. We walked with the Ranger to our way too yellow canoe. Besides the route the only instructions we received was to bring enough water. So, on our way to the canoe I decided to ask the Ranger “These alligators, they are small right?”. Well the answer was hopeful “We currently have one in the boat bay which is about 9ft (3 meters), and I would say that’s a medium sized one”. Both slightly nervous, we entered our Canoe, I pushed Hester of the bank promising I was going to enter the canoe and we were not going to flip over.

The views from our canoe were amazing, we paddled the 8 mile route making one mistake, but that was quickly resolved. In total we spotted 8 alligators of which the closest was about 2 meters from the canoe (yes it did raise our excitement level). We also spotted an enormous (I intended to write “amazing”, but Hester thinks I’m Americanizing so I’m using “enormous” instead) owl and 100’dreds of birds. For both of us this was definitely a highlight on our trip so far. After coming back to the boat launch area I was slightly overheated, but after drinking half a gallon of water I was back on my feet. That day we ended up in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida. I think we both recommend avoiding this city, there is really nothing there.

On our way to Mobile we hit our first traffic jam (day 18, not bad). Taking a short detour limited our delay and of course we came an hour early since we past the time zone again. Again, our AirBnB host was still cleaning heavily and kindly asked us to go and explore Mobile so that she had time to finish cleaning. Mobile is a nice city but staying there for a night was sufficient to see the highlights. We ended the evening in the park where the local radio station organized a concert with local musicians, going from R&B to Country.

The South is great. It’s cheap, people are friendly, its nice and warm (maybe a little too warm), the cities have history and it’s convenient to travel through by car. We are reaching the last two highlights we will be visiting in the South. New Orleans and Memphis, both stops we are looking very much forward to.

I think we are reaching the point where this doesn’t feel like vacation anymore, it’s starting to slowly become a way of living. This way of living can be considered as a very relaxing way of living. Also, we start to learn how to pack the car in a way that we always have the things we need on top. Something I’m really surprised about is that at this point Hester drove more miles then I did. For those who know Hester, she usually fell a sleep after 2 minutes of driving.

Well y’all (y’all is something we’ve heard over a 1000 times the last weeks and is something from the south) that’s it! If you like to get a notification when a new blog is published feel free to sign-up, you find the sign-up on the bottom of the page. We are off to New Orleans ……

Some numbers:

- Days on the road when finishing the Blog 19

- Miles driven 2800 (give or take 4500km)

- On budget 😊