October 2021November 2021 December 2021

11/30 - Little St. Simon's Morning Walk

Little St. Simon's Island has trained naturalists who will take you on various walks. They'll drive right out with you to one of the trailheads, but we decided to start walking towards the beach and let our guide catch up with us and pick us up for the rest of the way. We had to work off breakfast somehow.

The beach itself was brilliant. To get there, we had to pass through a storm of mosquitoes, our only real encounter with the insects. They were vicious, but they didn't follow us onto the beach proper. Then we walked and explored and our guide explained things to us. There were skate eggs, a tunicate, dolphins and all sorts of birds.


The lodge in the morning

Heading to the beach

Swamplands

A channel

An egret

Cactus

More of the land

And some more

The beach

Some shore birds

We're not sure what this is, but it's pretty neat.

Skate eggs.

A heron

A dark cluster

A tunicate, they're the vertebrate wanna-be phylum

Our photo of a dolphin

One of our traveling companion's picture of a dolphin

More of the beach country

And some more bright colors

Keywords: georgia

11/29 - Little St. Simon's Island

Little St. Simon's Island is a private reserve with a small hotel. We had booked a cottage for ourselves and our friends, so we settled in to rustic luxury. We arrived well before dinner, so we decided to take a walk and explore the island a bit. It was like our home country, flat swampland and lush vegetation. We made our way north along the main road. The island has a number of country roads and provides bicycles for those who haven't forgotten how to ride one.

We passed a tree full of vultures, took side spurs to get better views of swamps, got a good look at an armadillo and made our way to the South Dike after taking a number of side spurs. There were palmettos, swamplands, old bones and Spanish moss. We didn't run into any alligators which was just as well.


Grasslands

The vulture tree

The vulture tree in context

The road north

One of the vultures

Palmettos

An armadillo

Foliage

Further along

A curve in the road

A mushroom

A water view

An old bone, most likely from an old feast

The dike road

Swampland

More such land

A conch shell

Acorns

Pine cones

Keywords: georgia

11/28 - Sea Island, Fort Frederica and On to Little St. Simon's Island

This was a busy day starting with a last look at the Sea Island beach and the red morning glow of the sun, then a brief return visit to Fort Frederica and finally on to Little St. Simon's Island. We packed up and said our goodbyes to The Cloister and made our way north to the harbor where the ferry to Little St. Simon's Island starts. Our little Chevy was once again crammed with all of our luggage, and, since we were going to Little St. Simon's with our friends, they had to squeeze into the back with their luggage. There was no room left in the trunk. Luckily, it was only a short drive.

Sea Island again

The late sunrise light - to the east

More red light at morning

Sand

Yet another bird

Breakfast hunt

Fort Frederica again

Very different light

A modern bridge

The ferry to Little St. Simon's Island

Along the waterway

Our living room on Little St. Simon's Island

The garden

Keywords: georgia

11/27 - Sea Island and Fort Frederica

The next day we wandered the beach at Sea Island some more, and we visited Fort Frederica. Ages ago, this area was near the border of the British Empire and the Spanish Empire to the south, so these islands were strategically important. Fort Frederica was the British outpost, and there are still ruins from the old fort.

The big Christmas Tree at The Cloister

Another day on the beach at Sea Island

A sand dollar

Porch, where we had lunch

Fort Frederica is quiet today.

There was a whole town here, but only the foundations remain.

More foundations

What's left of the fort

A strategic waterway, or at least it was

The kitchen garden at Fort Frederica

Another foundation

Back to the beach towards evening

Sand pipers

Another

And another

Even later

Sentry cormorants

Keywords: georgia

11/26 - Christmas on Jekyll Island

We spent a day exploring Jekyll Island. It was once a retreat for the wealthy and powerful but is now a state park. We took the little guided tram and visited a number of houses that once belonged to this or that family. It was an exclusive club and, in many ways, like Newport, Rhode Island with its seaside estates. The big lure was once hunting, fishing and shooting. Now, it's tourism which is just fine with us as we were tourists at the time.

The flat, wet coastal lands

A little fellow

The Christmas tree

Interior decorations

Another tree



Check out that wreath

A close up - how Christmassy

Stained glass at the church

Outdoors

Keywords: georgia

11/26 - Christmas at the Cloister

We found these pictures a bit late, but we're inserting them here. Welcome to The Cloister at Christmas.



Keywords: christmas, georgia

11/25 - Thanksgiving at the Cloister

The Cloister is an old fashioned family oriented resort. It was a bit formal, one of the few places left where jackets are required for dinner, but comfortable and hospitable. We just couldn't face Thanksgiving indoors, so we arranged for a take out meal we picked up at the golf resort. There were four of us, one of whom didn't eat turkey, but they gave us at least an eight pound roast turkey, probably bigger and enough sides - sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing - to serve maybe eight people. It was way more food than we could handle, but our friends took home most of the left overs.

During the day, we explored the beach on Sea Island. It's a pretty Atlantic style sand beach, the kind that runs from Cape Cod to Key West. Since we used to live on the East Coast, we found it familiar though it had been a long time. We found sand dollars and a horseshoe crab shell. There were pelicans and cormorants. Inland, on the tidal waters, there were egrets and tall grass. We walked a fair ways and worked up an appetite for dinner which provided to be a very good idea.

Sea Island beach

Rocks

Birds - mostly cormorants

On the beach

Beach grass

Beach flowers

Signs of autumn

Christmas is a-coming in

More Christmas

A horseshoe crab shell

The beach resort

Our Thanksgiving table

Our Thanksgiving dessert

Inland waters

Towards sunset

An egret

Evening light

Later on, more color

On the Cloister grounds

Keywords: georgia

11/24 - Outdoor Dining With Alligators

Our friends took us out to a seafood restaurant with a view of the bay and lots of alligators. We had boiled shrimp again, deviled crab, St. Louis ribs and corn on the cob. Then, we wandered over to the alligator pond and enjoyed the reptiles.

A big old fashioned seafood place

The alligator pond

Some alligators

Keywords: georgia

Keywords: georgia

11/24 - A Morning in Savannah

The next morning, we explored Savannah. One of our friends had lived there for a number of years, so she knew the layout and lore. It's a very pretty city with its old trees, old houses and shaded parks. Our friend is a lawyer, and the area was full of old fashioned, well connected law firms, so she had a gave us a good sense this aspect of Savannah culture and history. Savannah was, and still is, a port city.

Shade trees in one of the squares

An old building and shade

The view up

One of the famous squares of Savannah

More shade, surely a great relief on a summer day

Porches

Old brick

A door

A staircase

Another shady square

A modern street

Another park

Savannah style

A statue of a wild boar

More shade

And more shade

Great old trees

A tourist conveyance

Another old building

Keywords: georgia

Keywords: georgia

11/23 - Charleston to Savannah

We usually don't travel for Thanksgiving, but this year the friends we usually celebrate with were in Georgia. They even reassured us that the COVID prevalence was lower in Glynn County than back at home. We flew into Charleston and spent the night at Zero George which was both charming and convenient. The next day we picked up our rental car, a little Chevy. It was tiny and bit underpowered, but it was the Chevy that could.

We drove to Savannah and stayed at the Marriott down by the river. It was an old converted power plant, so it was huge and still had its smokestacks towering over it. It wasn't Thanksgiving yet, but the elves were hard at work setting up Christmas trees, draping everything with lights and building gingerbread houses. We were told that our hotel and its environs is usually full of drunken bridesmaids, but we didn't see any.

We met our friends for dinner at Husk and ate on the upstairs porch. Those old buildings were designed for the summer's heat, so they have a fair bit of protected outdoor space for dining. There's something to be said for vernacular architecture. It was a great meal. Naturally, we had some Carolina golden rice along with local oysters, peel-and-eat shrimp with peanuts, lily white biscuits, heritage pork with chestnuts and flank steak with a potato pancake.


The Zero George courtyard

The river in Savannah

A close up of the working port - According to Bloomberg, it's #1 for chicken foot exports to China.

Another view along the river

A gingerbread house under construction

Instead of alligators, they used to have these guys. That skeleton was too big for our lens.

Christmas and minerals

Husk

Husk outdoors

An evening urban walk

Urban lights - something we've been missing

More evening in Savannah

Christmas at the candy shop

The candy shop

Candy

The river boat

More evening lights with a touch of Christmas

More Christmas decorations as we neared our hotel

Evening lights in Savannah

Keywords: christmas, oysters, thanksgiving

Keywords: christmas, oysters, thanksgiving, georgia

11/22 - The Flight to Charleston

There was some pretty impressive scenery on our flight from Seattle to Charleston. We flew other snow covered mountains, broad plains cut by river channels and then the flat lands. Most of the time the skies were clear, but as we neared the Atlantic coast, there were clouds below and perfect conditions for a glory. That's an anti-solar halo around one's plane's shadow. It was visible for much of our flight as we approached Charleston, but then, as the sun started to set and we had a beautiful sunset to watch. As with so many west to east flights, we started early in the day and arrived late in the day, but we had some great views en route.















Keywords: flying, georgia

October 2021November 2021 December 2021