GEORGIA – Brunswick & St. Mary’s

JEKYLL ISLAND – The “Jewel of Georgia”… absolutely loved it here! Kept loading up our bikes and heading back for another day of biking, exploring, tours, food, history, etc. Biking along the beach at low tide was the funnest ever! We may never make it back here, but we will never forget how great it was!

The beauty and abundance of these iconic, massive live oak trees, and the most amazing jungle-like forests made Georgia so memorable for us! I think I read that on average these trees are like 65′ high and 88′ wide! One of the oldest (in Savannah) is actually 110′ wide!

The Jekyll Island Club was a luxurious and exclusive winter retreat for northern millionaires and their families between 1886 – 1942.  Some of the members included the Rockefellers, Pulitzers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans. This was the most exclusive and inaccessible resort in the world. At given times Club members present on Jekyll Island reportedly held 1/6^th of the worlds wealth. The Club closed at the end of the 1942 season due to complications from WWII. The state of Georgia bought the island in 1947 and transformed the resort into a state park.

… and we found another Fort to visit … seems we’re really liking Forts Haha 😁

New Years Eve – Went out for dinner at a place called Muscat Charlies to have an alligator appy. The restaurant is right on a pier. Some fishermen had just arrived and were cleaning their fish and it was causing quite a commotion with all kinds of birds swooping everywhere as the fish innards were being tossed back into the water 😄 The pelican was being a bully and chasing the other birds away. It was quite a show!

Blythe Island hike

St. Simmons Island – Pier & Lighthouse

Lover’s Oak in Brunswick

DARIEN – Visited a Rice Plantation on our last day in this area. Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation State Historic Site. This place was huge! 7,300 acres! Beautiful grounds and such interesting history! The land, purchased in 1806, stayed in the family through 5 generations! The last person that lived on site was a negro man named Rudolph Capers. He had been the cook, butler, and housekeeper on the Plantation for 40yrs!  The last living family member, Ophelia Dent, lived in the main house until she died in 1973. She left the whole property and all it’s contents to the state of Georgia. She also made provisions for Rudolph to stay as a paid caretaker for long as he wanted. Rudolph even gave tours to the public until his death in 1982. This Plantation once had 357 working negro slaves and in 1860 the Plantation produced 1.5 million pounds of the finest rice. Given that, we thought it was quite interesting that the Plantation was on the verge of foreclosure until some time after the family  stopped rice farming and began dairy farming on the land, ending that in 1942.

Driving out of Darien we noticed this huge chimney and pulled over to see what it was

Travelled a little further down the coast to Crooked River State Park in ST. MARY’S – first day here we hopped on a ferry with our bikes for an afternoon on CUMBERLAND ISLAND – a National Park. You can bike, hike and camp overnight but you can’t take your vehicle to this island.

Next we visited Okefenokee Swamp – National Wildlife Refuge. We took a boat tour, didn’t see many alligators out and about but we learned about some ‘swamp stuff’ and the scenery was stunning!

Just some interesting mushrooms I kept seeing while booting about on the many trails in the Crooked River State Park we camped at in St. Mary’s 🍄

🚗💨 On to Florida now ☀️ 🏰 🎢 🏖🌴 🦩 😎