Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Jekyll Island, Georgia

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Mornings in motels are pretty much the same for us.  We have developed a routine for how to put things back into the car and get moving.  We move silently around the rooms, putting things "where they go," and then voila!  We're packed and ready, one of us does the "last look," and we're off.
Such was today.

There were no plans for today, and the mental debating going on over where to go for the day wouldn't shut up in our minds. Roaming means just that..........aimless moving about.   

A stop at a Georgia Welcome Center and meeting "Gloria" there turned the tide, so to speak. Efficiently and intuitively, Gloria led us to a wall of motel suggestions for the Georgia beach spots.  Like a kid at a birthday party game, I pointed at one card on the wall, she called that motel to see if there were vacancies, and just about as easily as we had emptied our motel room and filled the car, we were into tonight's motel and sitting on the motel's beach at Jekyll Island, by one o'clock in the afternoon.  Efficiency!

A long beachcombing walk and then power walk back was a two and a half mile event, and today I crossed off a Bucket List wish.............I found whole, unbroken sand dollars on a beach!  A first!  And I actually found not one, but an entire PILE of sand dollars!  This wasn't actually written  on my Bucket List, but it was a mental item, just as visiting Jekyll Island had been. ( That plastic sack in the photo holds a giant piece of coral that I also found. It felt really yucky when touched, and that bag had been left in the sand, so I put it to use.)

We had dinner at a little restaurant named The Driftwood Bistro where I had grilled shrimp, fried okra and fried green tomatoes.  It doesn't get much more Southern than that! 

A motor tour of Jekyll Island followed, and we found "the historic district" shortly.


 The Jekyll Island Club Hotel was a showstopper, as were some  old "cottages" where entire families and their offspring's offspring could all stay at the same time.

Ancient trees sagging with Spanish moss that might be older than dirt also brought us to a halt.  The moss, in some cases, hangs to the ground, swaying in the evening breeze.

We pulled into a parking lot to watch the sun go down, and it did, with a glorious, colorful display.
A photographer from Florida was also shooting the sundown, and he pointed out the crescent moon and explained that a comet was due to appear beneath that moon any minute.  We waited until we were nearly frozen, then gave up, but we're keeping our eye out the window at that crescent, just in case it shows up late.
We're in a good place.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Photos and article, Copyright:  K P Gillenwater 2013