This year we decided a couple months before my birthday that we wanted to take a Thursday and Friday off work and do a long weekend trip. But where do we go?? We decided to pick somewhere that we had not been before. We spent a few days searching. We looked at places that we’d need to fly, but flights were expensive as it was a fairly quick trip and the middle of summer. Then we turned to places that we could drive to. Ultimately we settled on Jekyll Island, Georgia.
When I would tell people what the plan was for my birthday I had a lot of people to tell me that they didn’t know Georgia had an island. They actually have 14 barrier islands. We ended up visiting 2 of them, Jekyll Island and St. Simon’s Island.
Jekyll Island has all the major hotel chains from Best Western, Days Inn, Holiday Inn, Homes 2 Suites, Westin and more. Pretty much any hotel brand you could want. We ended up picking a beachside cabin from VRBO and rented through Parker-Kaufman Realtors. Had we known ahead of time that they were the place to rent from it may have been cheaper to book direct and save those extra VRBO fees. So keep that in mind if you think you may want to visit.
However, there are no chain restaurants on the island. There are several restaurants spread over the island but none of them are chain restaurants. There are also no chain stores on the island other than the only convenience store on the island which is a Circle K. There is one grocery store, the Jekyll Market. They have a lot of products packed into a small space and they close at 7:00 pm. We picked up a few things here to eat in a few meals. They sell pretty much anything you will need, groceries, beach supplies, medication, souvenirs, beer and wine. They even have a bar selling frozen cocktails. They have a deli and restaurant in the space.
We didn’t know what to expect and what we found was a really laid back, apparently not well known beach town. There were not a lot of people on the Island. It was like visiting Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in the off season. The public beach parking lots would be full during the day. Saturday we went to St. Simon’s Island and we saw tons of people coming on the island as we were leaving and encountered a back up at the toll booth on our way back onto the island. So most people must just come in for the day to enjoy the beach rather than staying on the island. Even with that there was never any traffic driving around on the island. I guess they just come to lay on the beach.
We drove over on Thursday. It was about a 6 1/2 hour trip. We took our time as check-in was late in the afternoon. We just ate breakfast bars from home in the car on the way. We decided that we’d stop on the other side of Atlanta. I saw an exit for a convenience store in Jonesboro. However, that sign was deceiving as it ended up being a couple miles off the exit. We did pass a Chick-Fil-A Dwarf House getting there. First one we had seen before. We took a quick break, got gas and then had to figure out how to get back to the interstate without having to back track. We finally got there and headed south. Our next stop was at Macon where we stopped at a Circle K for a quick break before heading onward. Next up was a lunch break. At this point we were on I-16 headed towards Savannah. If you’ve ever been there you know that there is not a lot on that interstate. We ended up having lunch in downtown Dublin, GA. We went to Company Supply. Jeff got a burger called a Plain Jane and grits and I had pulled chicken with a salad and green beans. It was OK and would get us to dinner. Later we got to thinking about when we stopped for lunch heading to Savannah and looked back to find that we had stopped in Dublin then too. Then I realized that one of the places we had looked at was the same place we had stopped at then too.
After lunch we stopped one more time at a Love’s to change drivers and ended up arriving at 4:00 which was check-in time.
We went straight to our cottage and got settled in. Then went to the Beachtown shopping area. We visited all of the stores there and picked up some things at the Jekyll Market and headed back to the cottage and ate dinner. After dinner we went and found Driftwood Beach on the north end of the island a little before sunset. This beach as been formed by erosion of a forest of oak and pine trees.
The sun ended up setting behind the clouds. It was still a pretty sunset.
Friday was my birthday. We started the day with breakfast at our cottage and then went to do the Landmark Trolley Tour at the Mosaic Gallery. We weren’t sure if we’d get a tour of the entire island or what. Well it ended up just going across the street from Mosaic where were boarded onto the 240-acre Jekyll Island Beach Club property. We got to visit one of the historic homes, Moss Cottage, as Cindy, our guide gave us the history of the island and beach club. Each tour throughout the day gets to visit a different home. I had wondered why when I bought the tickets there was a cottage name beside the time. You see them all from the tour but only get to go inside one per tour.
After the tour we drove across the street to The Wharf at the beach club for lunch. The food here was mediocre. We started with the corn ribs appetizer which ended up being super spicy. I had the Southern Cobb salad with grilled chicken. The chicken had no flavor and the menu said that it had lettuce, bacon, pickled egg, black eyed peas, tomato, cheddar and green goddess dressing but when I got it there were no peas on the salad. That is one of the reasons I had gotten it was because I had never had black eyed peas on a salad before. Jeff ended up with one of the weirdest pastas he’s ever had. It was Grilled Sweet Corn Pasta. It was a flavor unlike anything either of us had ever tasted. It wasn’t bad, just was weird. Jeff ended up getting a slice of buttermilk pie and it was just ok. All of the ones we’ve had have tasted more like cheesecake and this one was also a little plain.
After lunch we went to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. They have hands-on learning area. They had a sign with the number of sea turtle nests that were currently on the island and it was over 100. There is a window where you can see into the area where they have incubators of rescued turtle eggs and you can see what looks like a hospital exam room with all sort of equipment. We saw a few baby turtles in a container in the window. In another building they had a rehabilitation center. There were several pools of turtles that have been rescued and are in the process of being rehabbed. They had several turtles that had been rescued from Maine that had gotten stranded and suffered hypothermia.
You can sign up for a couple of behind the scenes tours. One of them being a sunrise or sunset trip to check the status of the current nests. These last about 4 hours.
We then went to Faith Chapel before we left the Beach Club area. This chapel was built in 1904. There are 2 stained glass windows. One is a Tiffany stained glass window that was installed in 1921 on the front of the chapel. There is also one on the back that can be see from the pulpit area. Both of these are visible from the inside but from the outside you can’t see the details of the window.
Then we went to the Horton House which is one of the oldest homes in Georgia made with tabby. It was built in 1743 using tabby which is burnt oyster shells, sand, ash and water which made a stone like material. You can see the oyster shells in part of the building. Across the street is the duBignon Cemetery which has tabby walls and holds the 5 graves of Ann Amelia du Bignon, Joseph du Bignon, Marie Felicite Riffault, Hector deLiyannis, and George Harvey. This home and cemetery are on the National Register of Historic Places.
We then drove out to Clam Creek. When we got to the parking area the car in front of us was stopped. Took us a few minutes to realize that they were feeding the raccoon. There is a fishing pier that was full of people doing just that. We also got to see a cargo ship up close as it sailed by. We had been seeing them come and go from our cottage but this one was really close.
For dinner we went to the Beach House. We started with a massive pretzel. Jeff had a cheese pizza which he said tasted like it was just a frozen pizza and I had fish, brocollini and coleslaw. Again not much flavor in mine. We ended up taking a half pizza with us. It was a large pizza. The menu and the server didn’t tell us what size the pizza was.
After dinner we went to St. Andrews Beach and again the sun sat behind the clouds. There were a few people on this beach several were fishing at sun set. We didn’t see any of them catch anything. We did see some more driftwood on the beach.
Saturday morning we walked down to the beach in front of our cottage. There is a rock wall that you have to cross. They steps over aren’t too bad from the cottage side, but they are really steep on the beach side. You don’t realize it until you start down the other side. There was some beach area on that side as the tide was low.
We drove over to St. Simon’s island to visit the lighthouse. There are 129 steps. These steps are solid, you can’t see through them and realize that you are going up. Jeff made it to the top and actually stepped out on the platform. I tried to walk all the way around but there was a lady on one side trying to see her phone and blocking the way. So I had to turn around and go back the other way. The views were beautiful. I liked that they had plates on the banister at the top to let you know what direction you were looking. Would have been nice to have been provided with something telling what was in that direction or maybe something to look for in the distance. I did recognize Jekyll Island.
After we finished at the lighthouse we drove through the shopping area and then we drove to downtown Brunswick. In our research it made it sound like these were bustling areas. Our apple maps took us to the wrong side of the city of Brunswick. Took us a few minutes to find the area we wanted to visit. We drove through but didn’t find anywhere we wanted to stop in. We then looked and found that there was a tea factory in the town. We drove a couple blocks over to Biron Tea Factory. We were able to taste a couple of the teas and to smell any of the ones we wanted to. We did end up buying a couple bags of tea.
Then we started looking for somewhere to have lunch. We ended up going back to St. Simon’s island and having lunch at Southern Soul BBQ. This restaurant has been on Food Networks Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, BBQ Pittmaster’s and had stories written in several magazine’s like Southern Living and Garden and Gun among others. This was probably my favorite meal of the week. I had smoked turkey, baked beans and fries and Jeff had a corndog and mac and cheese. He then saw the burgers around us and wished that he had tried the burger.
After lunch we drove back to Jekyll Island and relaxed for the afternoon. Getting back on the island took awhile as there was a back up at the toll booth due to the number of people trying to get on the island. Once we made it back we watched Sheep Detective and I worked on a diamond art pumpkin craft that Jeff gave me for my birthday. At sunset we went to Glory beach and we ended up getting chased off the beach by lightning. We made it back to our cabin before the heavy rain started.
Sunday we headed home. We stopped in Dublin for lunch. We ate at Old Times Country Buffet. We ended up lined up out the door. We thought it was going to be packed, but the issue was that you paid at the register right inside the door. It was busy, but being a buffet we ate what we wanted and then got back on the road.
We took the scenic route home when get got south of Atlanta and realized that there was a race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. We saw parts of Georgia that we wouldn’t have otherwise. We drove home in rain and in some spots it was raining harder than others.
We saw several deer on a couple different occasions. We saw birds, raccoons and we topped it off with a beautiful full rainbow on our last night. If you want a laid back beach then we recommend checking out Jekyll Island, Georgia.
