The National Museum of the Mighty Eighth preserves the history of the Eighth Air Force from World War II to today. Abbey and I had no plans to visit until I randomly saw it on Google Maps and said, “We’re Stopping!!” The centerpiece of the museum is a restored B-17.

While we were touring the museum, I spotted 4 people wearing matching B-17 jackets. They were being escorted by a guy in a suit. Intrigued, I followed (Abbey had wandered off somewhere else), and listened as the curator gave the 4 people a private tour. As it turns out, the people were actual B-17 pilots and had just landed another B-17 at the Savannah airport. Woah!

The curator pushed some steps up to the B-17 and cleared out the barricade. The group ascended into the plane while I stood at the bottom of the steps looking forlorn. After a minute, the curator took pity, and realizing no one else was around, let me come up! The interior was fully restored and prepped for battle. I couldn’t believe how tight it was and how thin the framing and aluminum skin were. I proceeded to be part of the private tour for the next half hour, and learned all sorts of fascinating facts (well, fascinating to me but maybe not everyone) about the B-17. After the pilots left, the curator continued to give me a private tour of a Messerschmitt 109 and others. It turns out he retired from Westinghouse in Cheswick, PA where he decommissioned and decontaminated reactor coolant pumps for nuclear power plants. We knew a lot of the same people. Small world.

Sapelo Island is a state-managed barrier island in Georgia. You have to take a ferry to get there, and there are only about 70 full-time residents. Things are a little different out there. All the resident cars are old, decrepit heaps that barely run – it’s too expensive to ship over newer cars and the residents wouldn’t have the money anyways. None of the cars have license plates or current registration but no one seems to care. The exception is the state vehicles – they drive newer trucks and side-by-sides.

It was barely in the 30’s when we were on Sapelo, and wind and scattered showers made it feel colder. Because of this, no one else was on the beach. Sometimes I think we’re a little crazy.

Sapelo has a rich history. Various Native American tribes lived here for thousands of years, then the Spanish came in the 1500’s. Some ruins of older structures remain. Tabby was a common building material – equal parts lime, sand, oyster shells, and water.

We had a tour with a biologist while on the island, who specializes in endangered species but sort of gets involved in everything, including tagging and tracking horseshoe crabs. His jaw dropped when asking the audience why horseshoe crab blood is important, I answered, “Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL)!” LAL is used to test basically every pharmaceutical or medical device that comes in contact with blood. It is incredibly effective at identifying bacterial contamination. It will clot even with very small contamination. Before horseshoe crab blood, new vaccines or drugs had to be injected into hundreds of test rabbits or other animals and wait for symptoms to see if the vaccine was contaminated. 600,000 horseshoe crabs are caught, drained of 30% of their blood, and released back into the ocean in the United States each year. Some other countries don’t do the whole “releasing back into the ocean” part.

Bonaventure Cemetery is sprawling and spiritual, with Brobdingnagian trees and graves. The solitude and the spirituality was destroyed when a tour bus stopped and offloaded in the center of the cemetery, complete with a loud and over-eager tour guide. It didn’t bother Abbey as much as it bothered me.

Cheers!