Georgia on our mind!!!

St Simons Island

HE SAID:

This is the second time that I have written about our experiences in Georgia. Not sure what happened the first time,… I guess that I didn’t save it correctly. Here I was blaming Pat for the delay in posting about our time here, but I was the guilty one.

Anyway, we did arrive in Brunswick Georgia as planned on February 21. Pat did an awesome job finding an excellent RV park that we could stay for a full month. (I was really happy to have free cable, especially AMC where we could keep up with the Walking Dead)

I really enjoyed my time here, except for the terrible no see ums that took a liking  to me.  So much so, I had to visit a walk in to get some medication to stop the crazy itching.

Brunswick itself wasn't all that exciting.  All over this area of the country was amazing oak trees. Here is Pat and I having our picture taken in front of the oldest oak tree in town.

 Brunswick is know for it being a major import port for European and Asian cars, ie. Mercedes, BMW's etc. The size of ships the cars arrive on we huge.

Brunswick though is right beside two major tourist attractions,. Jekyll and St. Simon's Island. 

Jekyll Island was close to our RV park, so we spent a lot of time here. It had miles of beautiful sandy beaches where we often walked the dogs (just had to put up with a lot of sand in the RV). This island had a very famous winter resort where the rich and famous visited from the north. Unfortunately after the WW2 Florida became more popular and this resort had to shut it down. It was saved by the state and is used now as a historical site.

The Jekyll Island Turtle sanctuary was very interesting. 

Here they save sea turtles from all over the eastern USA. Above is the "Turtle" doc helping out this little guy.


We took a really good tour of St Simons Island.  There were quite a few plantations here where they grew cotton and rice. The summers where so hot though, the plantation owners would leave this area and go to Brunswick. However they left the slaves alone where many died.

The tour we took of this Island was very interesting. St Simons also played a big part in the civil war due to its strategic location.

My favourite tourist stop in Georgia was our visits to Savannah. I have always wanted to visit this area, ever since watching and reading the Prince of Tides. This was an amazing place. The scenery was fantastic.

Besides being the location of many films, including where they filmed Forest Gump, 

it was also the a spot for famous painters (Norman Rockwell's market scene) location.

Savannah was the location of one of the original 13 colonies and believe or not has the second largest St Patrick's day celebration in the USA (after NYC). We did our tour of the city the day after, and you could tell the city was well decorated. Even when I ordered a lemonade at Chick Fil-A it was green.

We both thought we might of left Florida a little too early. Even though where we were was really close to the state line, the weather was very cool and often wet.  Took advantage of the cool days and did some RV reorganization. When you live in a 30 by 10 foot home, everything must be kept organized.   Next stop ...the Carolina's. 

She said...Georgia was a lovely place to spend some time.  It was green, clean and the place we stayed was very nice.  There is so much history in this area, as a history buff I really enjoyed the tours that we took.  I loved St. Simons Island.  We went on a trolley tour around this island, which was presented very well.  Our guide was well versed in history and local customs.  We learned a lot about some of the freed slave culture as he tended to discuss this as we drove around the island.  His point about a church with blue stained glass windows being a predominantly black congregation was something I had never heard of.  As well, painting the roof of a porch sky blue will help keep bugs away.  After that I notice a lot of sky blue porch roofs - I do wonder if it works.  

Georgia was also very cool and wet during our visit.  On the days it did warm up the noseeums were a nightmare.  I am glad John was with me during walks, as they prefer his taste to mine and he diverted their attention from me.  John ended up with red itchy marks that looked very trashy, as well as being very itchy...poor guy, but it is better than the illnesses that he had last year during our trip.

We went on a number of walks on off leash dog parks with Libby and Kiri.  They enjoyed it...rubbing their beards in the coarse sand, having their skirts drag along the coarse sand...you're getting the drift, I know.  They liked to get their feet and belly wet, then absorb as much sand as they could to bring back into the car and finally to the motorhome.  Ick!  I swear we are still finding sand in corners from the Georgia beaches.

We met a few interesting people here - when we were at the Kissing Oak - picture above - a fellow actually pulled over to take our picture.  His family has lived in the area for about 150 years.  I think he may have circled block a couple of times to watch our selfie attempts and finally felt sorry for us.  In the park I chatted quite a bit with an older gentleman from the Ottawa area.  He had a beautiful German Shepard, who the girls got along with very well and we had long talks about dog health in an RV and internet reception.  We bumped into a couple from Edmonton who had a Westie and a Scottish Terrier - they could empathize about skirted dogs and the beach.  On an evening walk we started talking with a couple from Quebec who steered us to an RV Park that was in Jersey City, with a view of the Statue of Liberty, for our adventures in New York coming at the end of April.  It was a bonus for me as I was trying to figure out where to park the giant vehicle in the giant city.  Time went quickly and it was time to move on...which we will post about soon :)