Island Hopping

We’ve spent the majority of our time over the last few weeks hopping from island to island along the Atlantic coast, north to south, from South Carolina to Florida. In order of appearance:

Kiawah Island, SC. This is where I fell in love with the marsh! Right now the marsh is golden in color and reminds me of the autumn Iowa wheat fields. The marsh is expansive, serene and peaceful, beautiful. Kiawah Island itself is upscale, with meticulous homes in gated communities, mostly inaccessible to common folk such as ourselves. The exclusive feel is not our cup of tea, but those marshes definitely grabbed me right off the bat.

Hilton Head, South Carolina, one of my sister’s favorite vacation destinations, and famous for its golf courses. Hilton Head is upscale and stylish, with many gated sections and carefully regulated shopping plazas scattered throughout the island. The beaches feature hard-packed sand, which made it easy to walk for a long distance along the tern-dominated shoreline.

Tybee Island, Georgia. One peninsula of Tybee has a historic district containing both a lighthouse and buildings from the former Fort Screven. Barracks, officers’ homes and the guard house, all privately owned now, give the area much charm and character. Farther along the island, though, typical 60’s style motels, shops and restaurants line the main street, parallel to the ocean. Even so, it’s hard to argue with the beauty of that ocean!

Cockspur Island, close to Tybee. Cockspur is home to Fort Pulaski, a well-preserved brick fortress dating from the mid-1800’s, built to protect approaches to Savannah harbor. When built, it was considered an impenetrable fort, but Union forces attacked from Tybee with the new technology of rifled cannons. To  the surprise of the Confederates, the fort’s walls were easily damaged by these more powerful artillery, threatening the powder magazines and the lives of all in the fort, leaving no choice but to surrender. Cannonball indentations and breaches in parts of the fort wall still remain visible.

Adjacent to Fort Pulaski are walking trails, leading through marshy terrain (my new favorite landscape, as I mentioned above), and ending at the petite (46 feet) Cockspur Island Lighthouse, dating from 1856. We’ve seen that Maine does not have the exclusive on pretty lighthouses.

St. Simons Island, largest of the “Golden Isles” of Georgia. The Golden Isles are named for the vast marshlands which are yellow-colored in the fall, intermittently cut by streams, rivers, boardwalks, docks. Ah, so beautiful… no wonder I fell in love with this landscape. St Simons is home to Fort Frederica, established by British General James Oglethorpe in 1736 to protect the British colony of Georgia from Spanish raids. The hearty colonists who were willing to take a chance on life in the new world built houses of “tabby“ - a mixture of lime, water, sand and crushed oyster shells. Tabby is a surprisingly strong building material; the skeletons of the fort and homes are still in evidence. St. Simons also boasts an old-fashioned downtown section, with an 1862 lighthouse on the edge of the village.

Jekyll Island, GA. In the late 1800s and early 1900s this island was an exclusive winter retreat for the fabulously wealthy. Members of high society purchased the island and established the Jekyll Island Club. Many families (Morgan, Goodyear, Rockefeller, Gould, you get the idea) built “cottages” (i.e., mansions)  in a row adjacent to the clubhouse. Islesboro, the Maine island where we spend our summers, has a similar history. In  the early 1900‘s wealthy families built grand summer homes on Islesboro and established a genteel social scene in a beautiful out-of the-way place. In its heyday, Jekyll Island could only be reached by boat, although there is now a causeway. Islesboro, on the other hand, is still only accessed by ferry!

Cumberland Island, GA. This island trumps Jekyll Island... Almost all the land on this island was bought up in the late 1800’s by just one family, the Carnegies. The family built a huge main mansion and several other large homes, one for each of the Carnegie children when they got married. Unfortunately, the grand mansion, Dungeness, burned in 1959. Even so, its skeletal remains are majestic and give a good impression of what the Carnegie lifestyle must have been like.

Cumberland Island, now administered by the National Park Service, is a storybook  place. It’s peaceful and beautiful, with three types of terrain - the ocean beach, marshland (as you now know, my favorite!), and maritime forest. The forest’s moss-covered oak trees are gnarled and bent by the wind, like stunning sculptures. They provide a lovely arched canopy over the sandy, quiet roads.

Amelia Island, Florida. There’s a long strip of beach homes on the ocean side of this barrier island, plus a historic downtown (Fernandina Beach, on the Intracoastal Waterway) with lovely restaurants and boutiques. We liked this area very much, although our enthusiasm was tempered by the logging trucks which were constantly buzzing through on their way to the island’s behemoth paper pulp mill.

Our non-island stops over the last few weeks included Charleston and Savannah. We’d seen both of these cities in previous years, but their charms made another visit well worth while. In Charleston we happened to catch a festive Christmas parade; in Savannah it was fun to drive around the city’s many small squares. These little parks interrupt/intercept the street every block or two, so you have to zigzag around them. Each square has its own character, some with fountains or statues, most with benches or gazebos.

We next “rested” in St. Marys, Georgia for a week, with a minimum of sightseeing planned. We got to know some of the snowbirds at our campground, joined them for a potluck dinner one night, and a game of  “3-13“, a version of rummy, on another night. These experiences were a nice change of routine for us, as we seldom are anywhere long enough to get to know our RV neighbors.

One exception to the down-time mode in St. Marys was a trip to the huge Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour west of St. Marys. The refuge may more accurately be called a swamp, but for me, that was good news -!- lots of beautiful marshland. There is a meandering three-quarter mile boardwalk trail through the bog, ending at an observation tower from which we could see more of the “open prairie” swamp. While it was too cold for the alligators to be out, we enjoyed the amazing variety of birds, plants and trees. Speaking of cold, we’ve been in the midst of a cold spell for several weeks, wearing our heaviest coats. Not happy about that…our goal had been to avoid cold weather while down in the southern states!

This update is written from St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565 by the Spanish, making it America’s oldest continuously occupied (European) town. St. Augustine capitalizes heavily on that fact….tourist trolleys are a constant presence on the downtown streets, along with a gazillion average souvenir and gift shops. There are also many historic buildings, including Castillo de San Marcos. This late 1600s Spanish fortress was built of blocks of coquina, sedimentary stone made of shells and coral. The seashells can easily be seen when you get up close to the fort’s walls.

Another iconic architectural feature in St. Augustine is Flagler College, formerly the Ponce de Leon Hotel. It’s a Spanish Renaissance extravaganza - with a tiled roof, towers, arches, flags, fountains and courtyards. It was built in the late 1800s by Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil.

We’ll be in St. Augustine for a total of two weeks over Christmas and the New Year, so we’ll be doing more exploring here…in the meantime, we send wishes to all of you for a happy holiday season.
 
         Love from us both,
            Patty