I arrived here in the S.A.V. Wednesday night, after a relatively uneventful but tiring flight. Can’t believe it had been 18 months since I’d seen Kate and Gordon, the friends with whom I’m staying–it could have been last week.

But that’s one mark of the best of friends, isn’t it?

Yesterday I set out to visit one of my favorite local spots, the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge. To my keen disappointment, the four-mile gravel road through the refuge is closed for the month of June, due to construction and “water management.” Since I was last here, however, the refuge has built a gorgeous new visitor center, so I stopped there, asked a few questions, and learned that I could take a walking trail through the marsh. I briefly contemplated this–it’s only four miles; I did a five-mile snowshoe hike with my dad in March, with explosive blisters, so I could handle it–before I decided that taking that kind of hike in 90-something degree heat, with high humidity, without a water bottle would just be stupid.

So no gators for me yesterday.

But Nora (Kate and Gordon’s daughter) did take me to see the ducks and turtles in the pond near their house.

Nora has dubbed the black and white duck Penguin, and the white one Fluffy, due to the feathered crest on its head.

Today Nora, her grandmother (who’s also visiting), and I went to the Oatland Island Wildlife Center. I think we all liked the gators best.

We took the boardwalk over the marsh,

saw a ton of fiddler crabs (the tide was extremely low),

caught a glimpse of one cougar sleeping, watched some fish jump, didn’t manage to find the bobcat in its enclosure, enjoyed the sandhill cranes,

and revisited the alligators just in time to watch them get fed.

We’d also hoped to hit the beach, but traffic was far, far worse than I’d expected, so we ended up not having time. We did drive past my old house, which has a For Sale sign in the front yard. So do another five or so houses on my tiny street. The lovely woods across the main road from my little subdivision have been torn up completely, and construction on a major through-route is underway. When I moved in, the realtor told me this was a possibility and claimed it would drive up my property values if it happened. Instead, it appears that between the economy and the construction, people are desperate to get out. My house, which was at the low end of the  property-ownership cost spectrum, is currently valued at less than two-thirds of what I paid for it. And maybe it’s just the month-long drought Georgia’s had, but the neighborhood doesn’t seem so cute or so cozy anymore. Still, I hated walking away from that place.

And now I’m gonna turn in. Tomorrow is a birthday party for Nora’s little sister, then dinner at the Crab Shack, my most favorite restaurant in the universe. (If you’re in Savannah, please join us for dinner! E-mail me for details.) Sunday I’m heading to Wilmington, NC, for a couple days, to visit my sister and brother-in-law.

Heat and humidity notwithstanding, it’s good to be back in the South.