Fernandina Beach & More Beaches

Sunday, Feb. 17th – Tues., Feb. 26th

We flew home today from the Jacksonville airport. Our flight was 2 hours late leaving because of engine trouble earlier in the day in Boston. I’m perfectly happy to endure a 2-hour delay to get a plane with 2 functioning engines. With time to kill, I walked the airport and met an interesting woman traveling alone who was on her way to Portugal to link up with a Road Scholar trip that she booked. She raved about their trips and how enjoyable they are… small groups and just about all your expenses included. Hmmmm…… could be a nice way to do some international travel!

We had a lovely stay at home! A fun dinner with Ellen & Wayne the first night, where they also loaned us one of their cars for the week. Very sweet of them! The time went fast… I got my Mom fix with multiple visits; lunch and shopping with the girls; an evening getting caught up with my creative friends; overdue hair cuts for Gary & I; and we enjoyed multiple fun visits with Ellen & Wayne and a concert at UNH. I even got a chance to join the monthly cookbook group at the library. Everyone prepares a dish from the featured cookbook and then we have dinner and chat about making our various dishes. Many of my favorite ladies from Nottingham take part each month and it’s a heck of a lot of fun. I made a “terrine” for the first time. Think crustless quiche and you get the idea… nine eggs and almost 2 cups of heavy cream plus vegies… not exactly low cal.  We also took care of some non-fun things while home like working on our taxes and taking down the Christmas decorations. I even managed to get my 2nd shingrix (shingles) shot on the day of departure back to Georgia. Rite Aid called that morning and said it was finally in. Good timing! 

The flight back to Georgia was uneventful. After picking up the truck, we stopped for bbq on the way back to Brunswick at a place called Willie Jewel’s. It’s a small chain here in Georgia/Florida and supposedly has a restaurant opening in NH. I’ll have to find out more about that!

Wed., Feb. 27th – Sun., March 3rd 

Beach Haven

The first day back from New Hampshire was spent settling in and getting groceries. Then the next three days we visited various beaches in the area… maybe that was an after effect of being home and getting no exercise and dealing with an icy driveway. We needed warmth and beaches. 

On Thursday we visited St. Andrew’s Beach on Jekyll Island, which we hadn’t been to before and also walked the “Wanderer Memory Trail.” The Wanderer was a ship in the 1800’s that started out as a pleasure craft, then was sold and outfitted as a slave ship. The ship brought African slaves to this part of Georgia until the captain and his cronies were arrested. There is a walking trail with placards telling the tale of the ship and what became of some of the slaves. A sad time in our history. It was well done and ended at an observation deck overlooking the ocean and from there is the beach. The beach was lovely and wide but then, as you continue to walk, morphs surprisingly into huge pieces of driftwood blocking the beach in places. I managed to snake under them and continue walking. Gary was less enthused about doing the limbo to go underneath so opted to sit and hang out for a bit. Fascinating to see all these beautiful pieces of driftwood. Then as I continued to walk the beach opens back up again and the driftwood is gone. It’s amazing to me how beaches that are so close in proximity to one another can be so very different! It never gets old!

On Friday we did a 4-mile walk on Gould’s Inlet on St. Simons which is Gary’s favorite beach. We bumped into a woman who was wearing a Perkins Cove (Maine) sweatshirt. We started chatting and she is down here because of her husband’s job. She says she really misses lobster and good ice cream but admits that the shrimp here is excellent! I chuckled over the ice cream comment. We are known for having good ice cream up north! Gould’s Inlet is located at the tip of the island, and is in a wealthy area. Because of that, we deviated from our normal walk and took the path that leads to a side street where we could check out the amazing homes to see how the other half lives. Then we backtracked to do our walk on the beach, which is so interesting with the inlet, and sand bar and how the water pools in areas on the beach. Rather than returning the same way along the beach, we cut through another beach entrance and came back on Bruce Drive which has the cutest houses about a block from the water with their own private beach entrances. The homes are so sweet… some new, some old, some large, and some small. Charming!

On Saturday we went for a long walk on Glory Beach on Jekyll Island. The entrance to this beach is tucked away behind a large soccer field. You have to hunt to find it, so because of that, it’s virtually empty of any tourists! You can walk for miles and just see a few people. It’s an unusually wide beach, and no signs of civilization except for a water tower at a distance. Scenes from the Civil War movie “Glory” were shot here, thus the name. This time we walked in the opposite direction we had last time we were here and we ended up running into St. Andrews Beach and the driftwood. But, there was a narrow river of water cutting through the marsh area behind and thru the beach which stopped us. So while we could see the driftwood, we couldn’t access St. Andrew’s Beach without sinking into mud. There were large masses of pelicans and gulls by the water, and a few locals fishing. Very picturesque. 

Sunday was supposed to be a day of spotty showers and thunderstorms. We did a 3 mile walk in the morning in one of the local upscale housing developments near the campground. We enjoy walking there b/c we can check out the fancy houses. I took an umbrella on our walk, but didn’t have to use it. The rain held off for most of the day so we did some chores, and I worked on reviewing some taxes.  In the evening we were able to do a campfire before the rain finally did arrive. 

Mon., March 4th

Fernandina Beach

Today we decided to take a drive about an hour southeast of Brunswick to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island. Specifically we visited Fort Clinch State Park which is located at the tip of the island and covers 1,400 acres. Utterly magnificent! You enter the park via a 3 mile historic arching tree canopy. Just beautiful. There is a campground, which we checked out but is not a good fit for our size coach. 

The beach within the state park goes for miles and eventually ends up at the “main beach” outside of the park with public beach access. There is a “beach renourishment” program going on currently with a huge pipeline running down the length of the beach. The pipe starts out in the ocean and spews sand and water onto the beach in designated areas to re-nourish the beach and help with erosion. Rather fascinating. It goes hand-in-hand with dredging maintenance of the marine channel off the coast of Fort Clinch which is used by commercial cargo accessing Fernandina’s harbor and also by the Trident submarines from nearby King’s Bay Naval Base in Georgia. We could see the work being done out in the harbor as well. The work should be completed before this summer, and I guess they then will remove the rather unattractive pipe. The beach is exceptionally wide with lots of shells (many crushed) and apparently hunting for shark’s teeth is a common past time. 

After walking the beach we had lunch at one of the picnic tables, then visited Fort Clinch. What a find! Best $5 we’ve ever spent! Fascinating place! The awesome part is that you can wander around the whole place. Nothing is really off limits. My favorite areas were the long brick hallways leading to the inner sanctums and the spiral staircases leading to breathtaking upper views of the St. Mary’s River. But you also could access the various structures that included the prison, sleeping quarters for the soldiers, kitchen and laundry facilities and quartermaster areas. Fort Clinch is considered a Third System Fortification built of masonry and stone with a two wall system of brick and earth. Construction began in 1847 but was never completed. The fort is shaped like an irregular pentagon and has five tower bastions. There are all kinds of walkways, alleys, and staircases to meander through. It was built to house 500 soldiers and 78 pieces of artillery, although now there are about 10 cannons on display. Fascinating to explore the entire place!

Afterwards we stopped at the Willow Pond Nature Trail. A fabulous find! Great trail meandering around a large green algae infused pond. A distinct tropical feel to the whole thing. You almost expect a monster to come up slowly out of the green water. We did not see any alligators, although we saw an “Alligator Crossing” sign. Apparently it’s their commuting path from one pond to another, and Gary tried to scare me by shaking some bushes to make me think there were alligators about. 

That concluded our day at Fort Clinch other than one final stop at a viewing platform to see wildlife. We saw one egret and one heron in the tall marsh grass and the Amelia Island lighthouse across the way. Another day we will come back and explore the historic district in town. That’s enough exploring for one day!