We started our morning in the HGVC suite with a fabulous sunrise. We hadn’t seen the sun rise the past couple of days due to offshore clouds. But this morning, the sky was totally cloudless and the sun rose directly into our view.
We got all packed up and loaded into the car before 9:00 and were off to Jekyll Island, GA. We had a discussion about the route because one way was down Route 17, which went in a southwesterly direction, but wasn’t an interstate. We were worried that on a Saturday, we might encounter more local traffic. The alternative was to drive west for about 75 minutes and hook up with I-95 going south. That was the option we chose. Although a beautiful day to drive through very rural South Carolina, it was a long, slow drive on a 2-lane highway that was under construction for about 30 miles. Oh well, we enjoyed the countryside and eventually came to I-95.
The drive to Jekyll Island was 5 hours, and we were both ready to be out of the car by the time we got there, but the drive onto the island was through several miles of tidal creek land and salt marshes, really beautiful. We’ll be taking a tour of the island tomorrow and will know more about the history of this wonderful place, but part of its history is as the playground of the rich and famous. We’ll see some of their mansion-size “cottages” tomorrow.
We checked in to the Hampton Inn, unloaded and then kind of collapsed for a while. Our room is on the second floor over the pool and fire pit, which remains to be seen whether this will work out. It may be awfully noisy.
There is a huge protected area between the ocean and many of the hotels and developments. This is a very large dune that contains fantastic vegetation and is several hundred feet wide. To get to the beach you walk on a boardwalk through the vegetation.
After the lovely walk over the dune on the boardwalk, you get to a fantastic, wide, beach. It was one of the widest beaches I’ve ever seen. The sand was hard packed for the most part and was really easy to walk on.
We had just arrived on the beach and Christine looked down and saw an intact sand dollar. We have never found a sand dollar before so we were excited. And before too long, we had found 4 of them. We even found two that were still alive and we saw on their undersides the velvet-textured skin they have and all the little hairs, or cilia, moving. We left those on the beach.
We also enjoy watching the birds. We saw lots of sandpipers and plovers, but they fly away too quickly for us to get pictures. The gulls tended to stay put.
After our walk we returned to the room and enjoyed leftovers from our dinner last night. Now, we’re settled in for the night because I think we’ll have a long full day touring around Jekyll Island tomorrow.