A Few Hours at Fort Pulaski National Monument

After our pilgrimage to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, I had planned for us to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in Savannah--walk around, steal some Spanish moss, perhaps eat another meal of Southern food--but as we learned after the crazy traffic caused me to do some emergency Googling, Savannah is SUPER into St. Patrick's Day, and although the holiday wasn't even until the next day, there were a million people on the streets and in their cars ready to freaking celebrate. It took us about ten minutes to be completely over it.

So instead of coming back to Fort Pulaski on a different day, we headed straight there after our birthplace visit, and spent the rest of the day peacefully in the sunshine (although it was still cold, grr!):

This place is amazing, by the way--by FAR the best fort that we've ever been to for this one reason: it's still there!!! At Fort Smith, you can follow the outline of the ruins. At Fort Frederica,  which I'll show you later on our trip, you can do the same, and with the earthworks, and see one small recreated building from it. Those are impressive enough, but at Fort Pulaski, the entire fort is extant. And the moat around it. And the maze of the underground ammunition store that is like wandering a labyrinth to explore:







Fort Pulaski is maybe as close as you'll get to an authentic castle in North America, with its genuine moat (in which there was a genuine alligator that the National Park warned us to be on the lookout for!), and genuine drawbridge over the moat:

You could walk on top of the walls of the fort to see its turf roof and explore the offensive structures--

Just after I took the following photo, a Park Ranger screamed at me FROM THE PARADE GROUND BELOW to get off the cannon. Sorry!

The lower level had barracks and cruel prisons and even crueler prisons for the officers, as well as interesting hallways and lots of nooks and crannies to explore and windows to look out of to search for the alligator:

We all knew a LOT more about 19th century forts by the time these two took their Junior Ranger oaths!

Now, let's go to the beach!