Before we left Savannah and headed north to South Carolina, we had a couple of more things on Peter’s Punchlist. Anyone want to venture a guess? Yep – not 1 but 2 lighthouses on Tybee Island. I did use this as an opportunity to guilt him into indulging me in one of my favorite places to photograph, a historic cemetery. But more on that later.

I did experience a major disappointment yesterday which I thought would not garner me the pity party it warranted, so I decided to leave it out of yesterday’s post. Today, I was happy the situation was rectified to my supreme satisfaction. But I’ll get to that later.

First, we needed to complete our museum tour of Savannah, by visiting the Telfair Jepson Contemporary Art Museum. I’m not sure what it says about us, that the most enjoyable part of our visit was the Children’s Art Gallery. There were interactive displays about art concepts (color mixing using tops),

And an amazing multi-media room that animated William Golding’s illustrations of ships made with pencils and crayons.

But the most fun I had was walking through the 2,600 children’s self portraits gallery. The children made them from stickers after finishing their educational field trip at the museum.

After another delightful lunch of southern vegetarian food (my goodness, you have not had creamed corn until you have had it in the south), we made a quick visit to the Savannah Visitor’s Center to buy a $10 map of the Boneventure Cemetery. I was feeling a little bent out of shape about paying so much for a cartoon map (Mark absolutely would not have lowered himself to this level), but it was worth every proverbial single cent. And it was serendipitous that at this very same visitor center that charged me so much for this cartoon map, also changed “The Big Disappointment of April 21, 2026”, into unbridled happiness and giddy glee.

They had Leopold’s Ice Cream.

We just happened to walk by Leopold’s yesterday. It’s an old fashion soda fountain with all of my childhood favorites: ice cream sandwiches made from homemade chocolate chip cookies, banana splits, hot fudge sundaes….and apparently the ice cream is also amazing ice cream. But the line was long, and we heard it would take 30 minutes to get ice cream and there may not be a seat when you were ready to eat it. So with that big dark cotton candy shaped cloud over our heads, we reluctantly walked away.

But the most amazing visitor center I’ve ever been to, had not only spotless bathrooms (and many of them), but also 4 oz servings of Leopold’s. Peter and I happily scooped away while we planned out our visit to Boneventure Cemetery.

Yes, a cemetery. And we needed this cartoon map and time to plan because it is 103 acres. I am always conflicted about visiting cemeteries. They are beautiful spaces that honor loved ones. I like the space to reflect, imagine the stories of the people that once lived in a time so far away from mine, and think about the love and care with how they were memorialized.

The Bonaventure Cemetery asks visitors to consider it as a gallery that pays homage to over 29,000 residents. And after providing 4 clearly worded points of etiquette encourages visitors to explore freely. At one point the cemetery was a fashionable place for Victorians to hang out and play. Because the ratio of open space to headstones was high, they had plenty of places to play croquette, picnic, and throw parties.

The Bonaventure continued to give back to the community over the years. During the tough financial times of the 1910’s and 1920’s. The beautiful ironwork used to decorate the gravesites was scrapped or stolen and sold to wealthy Savannah homeowners for decorative use. You can still see much of it today when you walk around the historic downtown area.

We, along with four other tour groups, focused our time on the historical section of the cemetery. Even though these large family burial plots began in the 1800’s we were surprised to see graves as recent as 2006 in the old family plots.

One last gift from the Bonaventure, a name for my love of historic cemeteries, I am officially a Taphophile.

Oh, and we saw a couple of lighthouses.