Georgia - Skidaway Island

We are island hopping our way through Georgia. We visited Jekyll Island and St Simons Island and camped at Blythe Island and now Skidaway Island. These islands are primarily surrounded by marshes.

We came to Skidaway Island State Park to hike the trails under the live oak hammock through palmettos – the typical foliage of these islands – and look for a few letterboxes. The skies looked a little threatening, but we hit the trails.

The little bridge in this picture went over what looked like a trench and mound. We found out that these were “earthworks,” an early Civil War defense dug out by slaves.

We thought this tree was pretty cool.

We hoped to get to the observation tower, but Hurricane Matthew damage prevented that.

It’s probably hard to spot in this picture, but the boardwalk that should run from the sign to the tower is now aimed to the left and there is a downed tree blocking the tower. Rain drops hurried us back to our trailer.

On a side note, we went to the grocery store to buy granola - Barbara's breakfast food. Back in Massachusetts, Market Basket had a whole section for granola. In Florida we would find only one or two types, but there was no granola in the Brunswick Georgia Winn Dixie. But they did have grits.

lots of grits

We’d never seen so many varieties!

campground: Skidaway Island State Park, 80 miles, 1h 34min from Blythe Island Regional Park

Georgia - St Simons Island

We had two delightful days at St Simons Island – a charming residential seaside community with shops and restaurants, natural areas, and historic sites.

St Simons Lighthouse

We were targeting Fort Frederica National Monument where friends of ours volunteer, but we had some free time beforehand so we letterboxed and strolled through Wesley Woodland Walk. We visited at just the right time as the azaleas were in full bloom – a perfect spot for lunch.

A Celtic cross commemorated John and Charles Wesley’s brief time in the area. They both struggled in Georgia, but later gained notoriety in founding the Methodist church and writing hymns.

Then we went to Fort Frederica National Monument.

Fort Frederica teaches about the time in the 1700s when Great Britain and Spain vied for the land between St Augustine and Charleston. The British established a fort and settlement at this contentious time; it later became obsolete when Britain procured the territory. Only foundations and several ruins remain, but the park fills in the history. 

We watched the movie, took a ranger-led tour, and strolled around the grounds, but the highlight was listening to the living history demonstration. Granted the park volunteers happen to be friends of ours, but they did a fantastic job of living the history, teaching about the people of the fort community, and engaging the audience.

Our friends, Tom & Karen, are full-time RVers who volunteer throughout the country with the National Park Service. They are gifted teachers who especially love being interpretive volunteers. We follow their blog. We joined them for church, enjoyed meals at two St Simons restaurants, attended a delightful string ensemble concert, toured the island, partook in yummy pie baked over their fire, and spent some time reconnecting.

We even got into the St Simons spirit.

Back at our campsite, we were so excited when we saw an Escape 19 trailer two campsites from us. Since we bought ours, we had never met anyone with the exact same trailer.

an Escape 19 next to a Bigfoot trailer next to our Escape 19

Come to find out that they not only have the same model trailer, but they also are retired, empty nesters who full-time in their little RV and blog about it, too. Wow! There is someone else in the world who lives like us. :-)

campground: Blythe Island Regional Park, 18 miles (33 min) from Fort Frederica, St Simons Island

Georgia - Jekyll Island

Next we visited Jekyll Island – a coastal resort island owned by the state of Georgia.

Jekyll Island has bike trails covering most all of the island; it's a great way to experience the place. So we decided to rent bikes.

These old style bikes with no gears made it a little harder to pedal, but flat bike trails helped. We chose an 8.5-mile trail (with a little extra mileage to backtrack for letterboxes). Our route started out by the ocean.

We lost view of the coast as we went through a residential area. Then we biked through a marsh noticing many Great Egrets. When we stopped at the northern end of the island for lunch, a woman pointed out dolphins. So we sat on this driftwood, eating our lunch, and watching the dolphin show!

We had lots of “Oh, there’s another one!” as we spotted fins and tails.

image similar to what we spotted

From a distance we saw the St Simons Lighthouse. We expect to get a closer look at it tomorrow.

As we turned southward along the Intracoastal Waterway we approached the historic district: with the remains of the 1742 Horton House (one of the oldest remaining structures in Georgia),

an old foundation which like the Horton House was made of tabby (a material made of crushed oyster shells),

signs explaining the history of the area, the historic Jekyll Island Club, and some of the 33 “cottages” once owned by early 20^th century millionaires.

Goodyear Cottage

After our bike ride we went to the beach.

Each beach has its unique feel. This was a wide beach with lots of smooth packed sand, hardly any shells, and few people. A pleasant day to explore a new area.

campground: Blythe Island Regional Park, 17 miles (26 min) from Jekyll Island

distance from Okefenokee Pastimes to Blythe Island: 52 miles (1 hr 1 min)

Flordia & Georgia - Swamps

When we had limited vacation days, we targeted the premier tourist spots: Old Faithful Geyser, the south rim of the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Valley… Now that we have more time to explore we are visiting the not-so-popular places – like swamps – and taking the time to appreciate the little things we see.

While camped at Florida's FAVER-DYKES STATE PARK, we hiked most of their nature trails. The man who donated the land for the park wanted it to be an outdoor classroom, so the park had informative signs along the trails that explained the plants, wildlife, and natural features.

Here is a spot with a little overlook of the wetlands along the river.

Next we were off to OKEFENOKEE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE. This refuge encompasses most of southeastern Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, which is actually a peat bog, not a swamp. We checked out the visitor center with informative displays and a video with great close-up shots of wildlife. Barbara picked up the “Oke is 80” Passport Challenge which had a list of 80 activities like “hike the Boardwalk Trail” or “look for turtles.” With this in hand we explored some of the park and spotted wildlife:

We visited the Chesser Island Homestead to see a slice of pioneer life in the early 1900’s and had an interesting talk with the docent: a National Forest Service Volunteer.

The Sugar Cane Mill – mules pulled the sweep
so the rollers could squeeze the juice
from two stalks of sugar cane

Then we took the Chesser Island Boardwalk to Owls Roost Tower. The wildlife was pretty quiet by this time of day, but we enjoyed the swamp walk.

As for the Passport Challenge, Barbara completed 25 of the activities just before the office closed, so she got the patch.

And we saw this hawk on our way out of the park.

a Red Shouldered Hawk

Florida - St Augustine Area

We went to the ST AUGUSTINE LIGHT STATION and found several letterboxes. We also met two other letterboxers looking for the same boxes.

We next stopped at nearby ANASTASIA STATE PARK. The highlight of this park is its beach, but we also saw a former coquina quarry there. We had just learned about coquina stone at Washington Oaks.

From the sand dunes one can see the St Augustine Light in the distance.

The four miles of beach had more shore birds than people. And Bill got a good long beach walk.

Then we went to CASTILLO DE SAN MARCOS NATIONAL MONUMENT in the historic district of St Augustine.

The Spanish builders of the fort used coquina stone which helped the defenders repulse all attacks.

walls of the fort

We learned some history as we toured the fort and were reminded of Spain’s early role in our country.