From Charleston we drove south to Brunswick, Georgia. We'd met Tom and Janet (not to be confused with our Miami friends, the original Tom and Janet) during a cruise, and she and I became Facebook friends. Brunswick is Janet's home and agreeing to meet them for dinner gave us an excuse to visit this historic town. We took a chance on an AirBnB house, which turned out to be a funky place owned by an elderly Cuban spitfire. Place gave Allen the willies.
But the town of Brunswick was historic and beautiful in a 1950's kind of way.
One of its major claims to fame is a 900 year-old live oak, dubbed the "Lover's Oak," Indian maidens pledging their troth to handsome warriors, etc., etc. It was a magnificent tree.
We met our friends on St. Simon's Island, which gave us a stunning introduction to Georgia's beautiful "Golden Isles" coastline, a series of dynamic barrier islands home to amazing birds and other natural wonders (and lots of rich folks, pro golfers, and private communities. In fact, one of the private communities is so private that it was the site of a G-8 summit in 2004.).
What we didn't anticipate was that the Golden Isles were so beautiful and had so much for us to enjoy. We ended up staying five nights in the area instead of the two originally planned, moving to a hotel on St. Simon's Island when we couldn't extend at the funky cottage.
We first explored Jekyll Island, famous for the Jekyll Island Club built by some of the world's wealthiest families in the late 1800's. The club today is a high-end historic hotel surrounded by "cottages" for the wealthy, now all historic sites. Note the croquet pitch...
One of the cottages...
...and another.
But the island's natural beauty is what we really enjoyed.
Dumb lucky us. We did a driving tour and first stumbled onto aptly named Driftwood Beach.
Then, on the other side of the island, another eroding beach but with a totally different look.We were impressed at how shallow cypress tree roots are.
More dumb luck. We next explored St. Simon's Island and stumbled on Gould's Inlet, where we saw a red egret, one of only approximately 3,000 remaining because their feathers were prized by the "plume trade." The site was popular with birders.
And luckiest dumb luck of all, a birder at Gould's Inlet told us about a place back on Jekyll Island way off the beaten path where one could see all sorts of birds, so we decided to return the next day. She told us to "go around the old amphitheater to the lake," my turn to have the willies because the setting was so eerie.
Amphitheater is the hook-ie shaped thing in the center, south of Captain Wylly Road.
But the sights on the lake at the other side of the old amphitheater!!! Egrets, white, green, and night, roseate spoonbills, wood storks, an alligator, ducks, cormorants, turtles, Oh, My!
And the photos I like the best, taken near sunset (yeah, we returned to the same spot that evening), were of the wood storks.
Sunset from Latitude 31, a restaurant serving $10 bottle of decent wine.
Also on St. Simons Island is where the Wesley brothers first preached in North American, so the home of Methodism it is, in a way.
We also visited well-done Ft. Frederica National Monument, a beautiful setting originally built upon as a British fort to keep Spanish from claiming this part of the New World. And having had a pretty cold trip so far, we were thoroughly enjoying the soft warm afternoon the day brought.
Had no idea oranges could grow this far north.
Other highlights on SSI included watching Erin Carney and Pete Durning and their Jude on House Hunters International! We've known Erin since she was four, she used to babysit Holm, and she and family moved to Amsterdam two years ago (we visited them there). We'd been in on the "secret" of the show for awhile but it was still a thrill to see it! We'll be visiting and staying Erin's parents, some of our best friends, when we get to Miami.
Hardware store garden shop, just lovely.
And a very small lizard on the Earth Day Nature Trail.
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