Feb. 8, 2014: We are still in Georgia, but moving north at a very slow, reluctant pace. Watching the weather news from up north is daunting. We are not having the best of weather--everyone living here says it is the worst they have experienced in many years--but it is nowhere near what it is back home. 

Since our last entry, we have moved from Jekyll Island to Skidaway Island, just outside of Savannah. In the next blog entry, we will be on yet another island, St James, outside of Charleston, SC.

The last few days that we spent on Jekyll were fairly good. We had some very warm weather. We got to see the movie "Captain Phillips" which was as good as the book. The movie was part of the campground's activities provided for campers and shown in a large tent. During the showing, a light rain fell outside, cooling down the tent and all of us sitting inside. Everyone was shivering during much of the movie, but no one left.

The following day, Superbowl Sunday, was a good day also; B got to watch Peyton Manning get beat--she really didn't care which team won the game, as long as it wasn't Manning's.

Earlier, on Sunday, we walked out to the driftwood beach area for one last visit. It was sunny and mild at the campsite, but at the beach there was an ocean fog and it was an extremely low tide. The effect this made on the dead trees was amazing. Some of the trees that we had previously seen lying at the water's edge were now fully exposed and trees not visible before because they were under water could now be seen. Most of these were just blackened curved shapes, encrusted with barnacles and small shells, lying in the sand. At the water's edge, B found two live conchs. These are the first ones we have ever seen. She kept them because she wanted to try cooking them.
When we returned to the camper, she went online and got the information she needed: one video showed how to kill the conch and extract the animal; in another, a chef showed how to trim the meat. B decided to kill the animals by boiling, then she was able to extract the animal. However, the amount of usable meat was so small she did not do the final cooking. It is said that conch is delicious, so we will have to take "their" word for it.

On Monday morning we left Jekyll Island and drove to Skidaway Island State Park campground. This one was very different than Jekyll: the campsites are well separated, with trees between the sites, for privacy. It appears to be a very new campground; everything is neat, clean, level, and not rusted, even the TV cable worked.

The next morning, we walked out on one of the campground trails that went out into the marsh. We were very surprised not to see any wading birds in the marsh. The only water bird we saw was what may have been an Anhinga. We did see red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, and warblers in the wooded area of the trail. The wooded area also contained the remains of Confederate earthworks raised for the defense of Savannah from attack from the sea. However, they never saw any action, since Sherman marched to Savannah from the west. 

Wednesday, we drove off Skidaway to do some laundry and to eat at a nice restaurant. By the luck of the draw, from a list online, the laundry turned out to be one of the largest, cleanest, newest and best equiped laundry we have ever seen on any of our road trips, current and past. It had, besides huge washers and dryers, five large flat-screen TVs on the walls. And it had helpful attendants, as well as working bill changers. The coins were not absolutely needed because you could also use a credit card on the machines. 

While we were doing laundry, there was a torrential downpour that looked like it was never going to stop. When we were ready to leave the laundry, the rain nicely stopped. We were able to get to our camper without getting soaked. From here, we drove to Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House. This is a place run by Paula Deen's brother. A man at Jekyll Island campground had told us that it was very good. Well, you can never trust another man's judgement. We had two meals that were ok, but not what we considered very good. B had oysters and shrimp; the oysters were not in the shell. Then on the way out, she saw a sign saying, "today's oysters are from Texas." She found that really odd since Georgia is known for its oysters. We left here somewhat disappointed. The one good thing while we were eating was the skies cleared, the sun was strong and the temperature went up.

We drove out to Tybee Island. This had been one of the places I looked at with a campground. The island was built up with hotels and houses that blocked any view of the beach and ocean. An extremely crowded and commercial tourist area. We also looked at the campground we had considered; it was also extremely crowded, with little space between the campers--worst than Jekyll Island. It was also located in a residential area. Glad we didn't come here to camp.

On the road back, just off Tybee, we stopped to visit Fort Pulaski National Monument, out of curiosity, since this site was not familiar to me. This turned out to be a good stop. We learned that the fort, built in 1822, was where it was proven that a brick and masonry fort could be breached by cannon fire. Rifled cannons, fired from Union positions on Tybee Island, more than a mile away, were able to breach the seven and a half foot thick walls of the fort in April, 1862, causing the Confederate commander to surrender. The results here changed military thinking about the value of fixed defensive positions.

When we were ready to leave Fort Pulaski, I contacted OnStar to get directions back to our campground. When the operator asked what our destination was, I realized that I had been to too many island campgrounds, I couldn't remember which island we were camping on. We finally got that squared away and we were soon back at our site. 

The Skidaway campground has an interpretive center housing an interesting exhibit. The centerpiece is a skeleton of a Giant Ground Sloth. This animal is twenty feet tall, twent-five long and weighted an estimated 6000 pounds. The bones of this extinct animal were discovered on this island in 1822. The original bones found here are now at the Smithsonian. The skeleton displayed here is a replica of a nearly complete skeleton of the animal found in Daytona Beach, Florida. 

Yesterday, we left the campground again. First stop, B had her hair cut at a nearby hairdresser on the island that was selected from an online search. The hairdresser, B learned, was from Maine, and the receptionist had the same first name as our daughter. I waited for her in a nearby cafe. After some grocery shopping in a nice market--this little plaza was in a "high-rent" neighborhood of the island; actually, the whole island outside of the state park is a "high-rent" neighborhood--we drove out to another restaurant that we selected from an online search. It was Wiley's Championship BBQ, on US 80, near Fort Pulaski.
Here we had the kind of  meal we like to have: good food in a small restaurant made by someone that is proud of what they cook--and everything made in-house. We had great ribs, with great spicy sauce, really good home-made desserts and friendly service. The place had only six or seven tables. Another good luck of the draw for our online searches. 

Today is another rainy day, and cool. We are leaving this island tomorrow morning. We will be staying at a campground on St. James Island, outside of Charleston, SC, tomorrow night. If the campground is good, we may extend our stay for three or four nights. Another thing we hope to do tomorrow is to visit the site, in North Charleston, where the Confederate submarine, H. L. Hunley, is being conserved. This submarine is another one of the amazing stories that has come out of the Civil War.