We had to hit the road.
Since all of our spring plans were cancelled due to some sort of virus thingy, we jumped at the first opportunity to bug out and head to a state that was open. That sounds ridiculous if you say it out loud. Jekyll Island, Georgia was the closest and most desirable, at least from our point of view. So we went!
We passed the entrance to Jekyll Island on Hwy 17 during the last leg of the Florida trip at the beginning of the year and put it on our list of reasonably close places to explore. So…we explored it.
The campground is located on the north end of the island, a good distance from town. Personally, I dig that. I like the fact that the campground sort of has its own area separated from the civilized folks. The island has 7 distinctly named beaches (or beach access areas?) around the coastline and some of them really are uniquely different from the others. Honestly I feel like they probably could’ve stuck with maybe 3 or 4 different names but I’m not in charge of things like that for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, Keli insisted we visit EVERY SINGLE ONE of them…and Keli always wins…
If you click on the map below, you’ll open up the larger version and you can see that the road on the island basically takes you around the circumference, at least as much as the marsh will allow, and there are biking trails that more or less follow the same route.
As you know (because you diligently consume every word we write) we have a small RV so we can quickly unhook from a campsite and drive it wherever we need to go. It’s small and maneuverable and we love it. However, on this expedition we decided to act like sane people and leave it parked at our campsite while we (finally!) utilized our electric bikes. This particular outing is the exact use case scenario that we used to rationalize the purchase of the electric bikes.
Jekyll island boasts 20+ miles of bike trails, so naturally we needed bikes with a form of propulsion other than slightly-more-than-middle-aged legs.
(I am of course speaking of myself and not my lovely Keli who will probably never look like she’s even close to approaching middle age.)
We really got to know our bikes on this adventure and I’ll probably have a separate post about them in the near future. They really saved us on Jekyll Island and ended up being close to if not THE perfect means of movement around the area.
Jekyll Island Beaches
So what about the beaches? Well, without being too overly verbose, I’ll try to keep the highlights to a digestible minimum.
The most recognizable beach on Jekyll Island just so happens to be the one that is closest to the campground and it is appropriately named Driftwood Beach.
So…yeah…Driftwood Beach is pretty much one of the most interesting beaches we’ve ever been to and as the tide comes and goes, the scenery changes completely. If you dig taking pictures, you will not get bored with this place. You can (and we did) walk or ride your bike from the main beach access point all the way north around the tip of the island to the fishing pier. The landscape will NOT leave you bored.
Essentially the entire east coast of the island is one, long continuous beach and with the exception of Driftwood Beach, the scenery is fairly typical throughout the rest of the island from what we experienced.
The 3 southernmost beaches, South Dunes, Glory and St. Andrews are noticeably quieter than the others, but you should take that with a grain of salt since there is a pandemic and many places are still completely shut down. I will say that we had a very peaceful moment at St. Andrews Beach when we spotted a group of dolphins leisurely swimming by in the brackish water about 100 yards from where we were sitting. Of course I didn’t have a long lens with me to capture it. My bad.
Beach Village, Golf Courses and Touristy Stuff
I’ll have to keep this brief because (as we all know) things are little odd right now and its not fair to talk about things without context. We all know what’s going on in the country. We all know its going to take a while to get back up to 100% open. With that being said, much of the touristy stuff was simply unavailable to us, including the museums and historic buildings on the west side of the island. Only a few restaurants were open, we have no idea about the golf because we never even laid eyes on a fairway or clubhouse, about half of the shops were open in beach village, and I’m really unsure if any of the major hotels/resorts were open at all. To say it was quiet might be a HUGE understatement…but I’m not complaining. How often do you get to hit a popular destination like this with great weather and empty beaches?
On a side note, the campground was NOT empty. Not even close.
There is an interesting argument to be made regarding the social distancing stuff and RV life but I have no dog in that fight so I’ll leave it alone. I will say this: being fully self contained in our little rig with the ability to drive, cook, communicate, sleep, shower and poop without coming into contact with other humans begs, perhaps, a little more consideration in these scenarios.
Fails
Since we began our RV travels with, by all measures, an incredibly successful experience, we naturally assumed we had it all figured out and this short jaunt would be cake. Well…I screwed up a few things.
Surprisingly, Rechargeable Batteries Need Chargers
Since I am a red-blooded American male, I naturally always adopt the “Be Prepared” motto from the Boy Scouts. I am the guy who is always overprepared with everything…always…redundancy rules! So when I busted out my giant, 25 year old camera bag and began stuffing it to the gills with almost everything photo related that I own for this 4-day trip, (2 camera bodies, 4 batteries, 5 lenses, filters, tripod, etc. (Overkill???)) something didn’t get included…a battery charger.
Funny thing: digital cameras really like electricity stored in their batteries or they won’t take pretty pictures. I survived and chided myself repeatedly almost daily…after searching through every bag I brought along at least 3 times. Fail.
Laptop Computers Also Like To Be Charged
That’s right folks, yours truly ALSO somehow neglected to include a power cable to charge ye olde laptop that joined me on this trip. Oh I thought I had everything figured out for this RV adventure. I had the photo gear and the computer gear so I could start this blog post and really stay on top of things. Fail.
Food? I Screwed Up Food Too?
For reasons I can’t explain (my age?) we didn’t really bring a decent variety of food on this trip and I kinda ruined our bread. I’m not sure how it happened. I mean…after the last 2 months of not being able to eat at restaurants, I know I’m a master chef now, so how did I botch this?
Answer: one stupid recipe faux pas (caused completely by me) that lasted throughout our trip. I normally make a loaf of sandwich bread that is just fantastic and a batch of hamburger buns about once a week. Since I screwed up the recipe, our sandwiches sucked and the burgers weren’t great on the buns. It sullied our culinary experiences. We should’ve just bought regular bread and moved on , but nooooooooo!!! We HAD to use the CRAPPY bread so it wouldn’t go to waste. AND to add insult to injury, I tried to cook something brand new on the trip and that failed spectacularly also.
Here’s a tip:
DON’T TRY TO COOK NEW THINGS WHEN ON A SHORT RV TRIP!
STICK TO THE CRAP YOU KNOW! YOUR CAMPGROUND NEIGHBORS WILL LOOK AT YOU FUNNY WHEN THEY HEAR YOU SWEARING AT YOUR GRILL!
Fail.
Final thoughts
Despite the goofs on my part, Jekyll Island is a fantastic place to visit. Since it is somewhat close to us, it will probably be on our short list of quick getaways when time is a limiting factor. It has a very diverse landscape and a LOT of beach on its coastline. You could go bird watching along the marsh on the north end of the island or find a monstrous expanse of deserted beach on the south end. If fishing, horseback riding or golf are more your style, that’s available as well. I personally find it quite intriguing that Jekyll Island has so much to offer and they offer it with great respect for the ecosystem and environment.
This is not your typical over-commercialized beach area with huge hotels enormous parking lots and resorts every 7 feet, Jekyll Island integrates a few residential areas and commercial areas that exist within the confines of what make the Island so unique and desirable in the first place. I certainly wish more places would follow that philosophy.
Check out Keli’s video of our experience:
