Once we knew our time in Tennessee was firmly limited to December 14th, 2018, we started planning a final tour of a couple Southern states. We left from our lovely town of Powell and headed off through the mountains to Georgia. After a beautiful drive through innumerable small towns nestled in mountain valleys along the way, we emerged from the foothills near Watson Mills and took a small detour to visit their covered bridge.

We then carried on through a succession of rolling fields, small towns, more fields, a few forests, and finally arrived in Augusta, home of …

… and Luigi’s, one of the best Italian restaurants I have ever eaten at, this side of Italy.

I think they play golf here as well. After a walk through the well-kept but very small downtown area …

… we visited a very old cemetery just on the edge of the downtown area. We are always impressed by how people bury their dead. You never quite know what traditions you will find, and what names you will see.

In the South, you are often not far from reminders of slavery and the slave economy. A short drive from Augusta is the Redcliffe Plantation.

It is sobering thought to ponder the lives that were spent to build this house and maintain it through the years.

We then carried on to Savannah, which is every bit as genteel and perhaps sordid as it is reputed to be. Also full of southern history, it has a lot of spectacular houses and the downtown core is a walk through history.

We took a drive out to Tybee Island, a totally tourist town, but yet quite attractive and fun.

Our time in Savannah spent, we looked northwards, stopped for coffee…

… and started driving. The coast line along this stretch is broken by marshland and great stretches of tidal flats. We took a drive out to one of the coastal islands to have look.

Finally we arrived in Charleston. We had planned to spend three nights here in order to have a good look around and explore the hinterland as we did in Savannah. However, the weather did not cooperate. We took a quick tour around the city …

… and then in light of the storm warning of heavy snow and road closures, we hightailed back through the mountains to Knoxville and so cut short our tour of the south.