Day 6: December 26, 2017
Island Hopping

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At the time I was informed that my Christmas Day trolley booking was a goof, I was told I could either get a refund or use it on another date. Since I was planning on heading home Tuesday morning, my first impulse was to take the refund. But that plan was hardly concrete so, after a little thought, I decided to take the tour before leaving town. I used some of the time I had before departure to walk out on the pier and grab pictures of the bridge that carries US-17 over Brunswick River and the northern end of Jekyll Island. Seeing how close they are makes it easy to understand why the GPS kept recommending restaurants on Saint Simons while I was driving around Jekyll. I also got a shot of the lighthouse before walking back to shore and taking a full color photo of a pair of resting gulls backed by the sun.

St Simons Trolley Company provides a lot of information and passes a lot of interesting places, but, as is usually the case with motorized tours, there weren't a lot of opportunities for pictures. Even our one time stepping off the trolley didn't go as planned because Christmas had pushed cleaning day at Christ Church from Monday to Tuesday. But the stop did give me a chance to photograph our driver/guide, Kevin, and the trolley. Although it sits on a more modern chassis the wooden trolley car dates from 1939 and is really quite cool. I thought I also got a picture of the tree under which Charles Wesley preached his first sermon. Apparently that's not the case as the plaque refers to the tree in past tense.

At the end of the trolley tour, I headed to the nearby Saint Simons Lighthouse and ultimately to its top. The keeper's house at its base now contains a museum but no photos are allowed. After climbing the 129 steps to the top, I took a picture of both the Brunswick River Bridge and the pier from which I took the earlier one.

There are lots of live oaks on Saint Simons though not nearly as many as there once were. Saint Simons supplied timber to build the USS Constitution and other Navy ships. Kevin told us that 300 years is a typical live oak life span. That's a hundred years of growth, a hundred "maturing", and a hundred dieing. Thomasville's "Big Oak", which I visited in 2014, is about 340 years old. But Kevin also told us of one in Brunswick thought to be 900 years old. I stopped by that tree, the Lovers Oak, on the way out of town.

One thing that makes this extra special is the extremely rare opportunity to use this quote.


Leaving Brunswick after noon limited my range for the day, but rather than seeing that as a negative I used it as justification for an overnight on Tybee Island near Savannah. I took advantage of winter rates at the Royal Palm Motel then walked the few blocks to Sting Ray's for dinner. Since it was dark by the time I headed back to my room, I grabbed night shots of both places, too. As I ate, I shared the photo of my meal to Twitter and Facebook accompanied by the singable lines "Denny went down the Georgia. He was looking for some shrimp to peel."

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