This is a citrine geode, from Brazil. It formed in a volcanic lava cavity about 100 million years ago. It took years to recover and prepare for display. It’s one of the largest known citrine geodes. It’s just sitting there in a hotel in Savannah.

It’s one of those pleasant mixtures of old and new, which some places with a good sense of history can highlight. There’s new walls and clean, modern, steel and cement, and also exposed and distressed bricks that have seen a century or more of history around them. And maybe much more. This hotel sits along the river, and a lot of the stones found around this area were used as ballast on ships. When they weren’t needed, they got pulled from the boats and put back to work in the buildings and roads and so on. This Marriott, for example, is the old power plant, which dates back to 1912.

You look around and you can imagine the years of work and sweat and all of things, both terrible and wonderful, that passed by these walls. You walk through the floors where the Marriott’s guest rooms are and you’ll pass by the old smoke stacks. It’s a neat, new, old place. More towns need places like this.

Anyway, nearby is this amethyst geode, the deep purple offset by these large calcite crystals. The whole of the hotel lobby is like this.

Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz. The Greeks wore it. And they made drinking cups out of the stuff, thinking that amethyst somehow kept them sober. The ancient Greeks, it seems, were big Facebook users.

There’s not a sense of scale here, but a small adult could comfortably climb into this one, and that’s not fake news.

This citrine geode stalagmite is almost as tall, as I am. Citrine is also a quartz. The color is brought about by subatomic impurities, but — I just learned — natural citrine is rare, and most are heat-treated amethysts or other smoky quartz. I read how you can tell, the difference, but not until after we left. (Oh well! Have to go back!) Brazil is the leading producer of citrine. There’s a long-standing superstition, across several cultures, it seems, that it will bring prosperity. And, again, almost my height.

Look at this giant amethyst throne!

I never knew I needed a stegosaurus fossil display until I saw this one. Spiky tails, mysterious back plates, what’s not to love?

You can get toys and models and even cookie cutters, but you can’t buy a complete stegosaurus fossil on e-bay. Maybe I should set up an email alert.

You can buy trilobite fossils. But none as big as this.

Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History would tell you the trilobite could grow as large as 28 inches, so about as twice as large as these monsters.

This hotel has so many fossils on display this specimen of nautiluses is almost hidden. Not for me. I know you have to work for the best views. I’m willing to pace around aimlessly and hold up others, to see the best things.

Or … just go right outside the front door, where this almost 7-foot tall quartz is on display. The display placard says it weighs almost 10,000 pounds.

Oh, and when it was discovered it was even larger.

There should be a placard about that experience.

Just outside again, and you’re on River Street. All of this is in the newly revitalized portion of the street. Last year was big for this tourist area. We took a moment to appreciate the bridge we ran over on Saturday. This is a limited panorama of the Savannah River. Click to embiggen.

And here we are trying to figure out what is on the lens of The Yankee’s camera.

We traded selfies with a nice young couple. I took a few on their phone. They took a few on ours. I don’t know what they’ll do with theirs, but if the guy is smart he’ll make some cool keepsake of it. Me? I’m turning this one into an ornament.

I make ornaments every year. We can fill an entire tree by now. And we can’t display them because a cat will break them, he typed with an almost inadvertent sigh.

We went into one of the speciality shops for a present or two, and another for a treat. And in one of those stores I got photos with which I’ll update the front of the website later this week. Here’s a tease.

And here’s something tasty, just because it was there. By the time you’ve read this, it will all be eaten. (By someone not named me.)

All of the above was on Monday. We traveled back to Indiana today. Woke up way too early, said auf Wiedersehen our friends, and caught an Uber to go to the airport. This happened well before daylight for two reasons. First, for some reason the airports are now suggesting you arrive two hours early. Second, people vastly overestimate the amount of time it takes to travel through unfamiliar airports.

Because I have been in it twice now I can safely say this: Savannah’s airport is small. And because we were driving out in the dark, we met no traffic. Arrived at the baggage desk with no one in front of us. Spent more time weaving through an excessive amount of queue barriers than actually passing through security.

We needed to be there half an hour early, not two hours early.

We were there much closer to two hours early.

Uneventful flight to Atlanta. Said goodbye to the last of our friends there, and then had to head farther north. Landed in Indianapolis, where it was 18 degrees. Everything here was uneventful. Luggage. Shuttle to the car. Drive back to Btown, lunch, and then I spent the better part of the afternoon in the recliner.

And then I went to campus. (Hence the cool banner there.) Yes, this is my day off, I went to work. And I was there until about 8 p.m.

That’s … dedication? We’re going with that. Dedication.

Also, I knew there would be a musical performance. This is Ladies First, IU’s all-female a capella group.

More from them in this space tomorrow.

And this is Caroline Klare. She just wrapped up her last weather hit for IUSTV and now she is getting set for graduation. She’s been doing weather for IUSTV since her freshman year. October 2018, I think it was.

Whatever the date of her first forecast, she’s easily used that green screen behind us more than anyone else. And she already has a (non-broadcast) meteorology job lined up. They’ve been waiting on her for about a year, it turns out. And that makes perfect sense. She’s a thoughtful and kind person. She knows her stuff. And she’s incredibly smart, with a wisdom, I’ve always thought, beyond her years. We’re going to miss her around here.

So I went to work on my off day to watch the news. It was the last news production of the term. That’s worth going in for. Also, I tried to make a dent on catching up on email. Maybe it’ll mean tomorrow won’t be so daunting.

But we’ll still be on vacation here, tomorrow! Plenty more stuff to work our way through for the sake of the website. Come on back to check out what should be a pleasant diversion for a Wednesday.