Brunswick, Georgia

We've been in Brunswick, Georgia since February 23.  We'll be leaving here on March 23.  The first 2 weeks were fraught with rainy, windy (15mph-25mph/gusts to 35mph) weather and a couple of tornado events just to keep us on our toes.  It seems to be true that mobile/motor homes are magnets for tornadoes--we've been threatened with them several times over the past couple of months.  We do have our routine down--find the best available shelter (turned out to be a ditch when we were in Alabama), dress in something more substantial than sweats, make sure we have credit cards/cash/cell phones, have the laptop wrapped in plastic and ready to grab as we run out the door.  So far that's as far as we've had to go, and truly don't wish to go any further.  Over this past week the weather has FINALLY become very favorable with sunny skies and light winds, so we've been able to comfortably get out a bit.

The park that we're in here is labeled as 'resort', and is an improvement over the last park.  The streets are paved and the pads are level concrete.  Most all the sites are pull-thrus with a concrete patio and grill.

We've been able to get out on our bikes again, and walking around the park is very comfortable.  There's a small pond at the back side of the park where we spotted a blue heron on one of our walks.

We're actually about 10 miles outside of Brunswick proper.  To get to Brunswick, we drive over the Sidney Lanier Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge.  It's about 1.5 miles across and is a popular route for runners, walkers, and bikers.  We took a walk over it in each direction yesterday.

Brunswick was home to one of the shipyards that built liberty ships during World War II.  The number of ships that were built in a short amount of time by these shipyards is impressive.  Brunswick's World War II memorial is a model of one of these liberty ships.

There are 2 islands in Brunswick that are popular tourist areas--St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island.  Both of them were playgrounds for the rich and famous in the early 1900's.  Today St. Simons Island is very touristy, while Jekyll Island has tried to maintain its undeveloped status, focusing on nature.

On St. Simons Island, we visited the lighthouse.  This still-functioning lighthouse was build in 1872, is 104 feet tall, and there are 129 steps to the top.

We also visited the Fort Frederica National Monument which is on St. Simons.  The ruins of this fort is an interesting tour.  It was built by James Oglethorpe in the 1700's to defend the Georgia colony from the Spanish invasion.  Despite its success, its existence was short lived once the Spanish threat disappeared.

This was our first visit to a national park.  We procured our senior-citizen lifetime pass to all national parks for a whopping $10!!  What a deal.  Even though only one of us is officially a senior citizen, the pass allows the senior citizen to bring along a guest, so we're now set to visit as many national parks as we can/want during our adventure and beyond.

Our visit to Jekyll Island focused mainly on the sea turtle protection and rescue mission that is in force there.  We visited the Sea Turtle Center and saw some of the turtles that are currently undergoing medical and physical rehab procedures.  The situation for sea turtles is not good.  Pollution of the Sargasso Sea where the sea turtles mature is causing great harm to the turtles.  One of the bigger problems is the growth of barnacles on the turtles' shells.

There was a bit of laser surgery going on while we were there.  Visitors could view through a window.

Tomorrow we're going to Jacksonville, FL which is about 60 miles south of Brunswick. And we're toying with the idea of taking a swamp tour next week in the Okefenokee Swamp not far from here.