So I might be a bit partial but we love our home state of Georgia. It has beautiful mountains, the big city of Atlanta, professional soccer, basketball, baseball, and football teams, some good ole SEC college football (GO DAWGS!), an international airport, swamps, a very mini Grand Canyon, lakes, coastal plains, an amazing aquarium and zoo, some beautiful shorelines, and pretty decent weather, and of course, our friends and family. I mean…what else do you need?
Since we live in Georgia, I didn’t include it in our state count until we actually visited the state in the camper. Didn’t want to feel like we were cheating. We skipped the aquarium and zoo and decided to visit places our boys had never been to and headed south.
Just a quick overnight stay at A.H. Stephens State Park.
We headed to the Savannah/Tybee Island area for what we considered our first official stop. Tybee was great.
We stayed at the River’s End. The campground was nice. The staff was friendly, they even have escorts to help you to your site and with backing. (Although, Trev did an amazing job and didn’t really need the help, it was a nice touch). The campground was kind of tight though. We were blessed to not have a neighbor on either side until the last night. So that helped it not feel as tight.
The campground is close to the Public Works and Water and Sewer facilities so the walk down to the beach wasn’t very scenic or pleasantly aromatic but the beach was just a short 1/2 mile walk from the campground. Despite the fact that I don’t like water, I am fascinated by the ocean. The vastness, the beauty, and creations it holds. It amazes me.
The boys love it too and they especially like beach combing. I get requests every trip down to the beach to keep shells, crabs, reeds, barracuda heads, etc. I hate telling them no but we don’t have any room to store them nor do I have any desire to bring dead organisms along for the journey.
We purchased tickets from Old Savannah Tours for the Historic On/Off Tour.
This worked out great. We only had a few days in the area and we felt this was a lot of bang for the buck. We were able to park for free at Old Savannah Tours Welcome Center. We hopped on the trolley for a guided tour of the city. The guides provided a lot of interesting facts about the city so it was educational and entertaining. Savannah is such a pretty city with its Spanish moss covered trees and beautiful park squares.
The trolley was even boarded a few times by historical characters.
We were able to hop on and off the trolley at any stop and ride all day. Perfect! We hopped off at Stop 4 to see the infamous Forsyth Park Fountain. Forsyth Park also happens to be where Forrest Gump sat on a bench with his box of chocolates. It also has a playground so the boys were able to run off some energy.
Back on the trolley until we got to stop 7, The Pirate’s House. After listening to “Robert Louis Stevenson,” we disembarked for lunch at the Pirate’s House. Mr. Stevenson, visited the Pirate’s House and was inspired to write Treasure Island here.
The boys had watched Treasure Island and Mason has read the book so they thought it was pretty cool. The food was pretty good. Mason, Trevor, and I ate the buffet. The buffet had southern classics like sweet potatoes, collard greens, green beans, mac and cheese, squash casserole, fried chicken, and the fried catfish was really good too. Tuck ordered off the menu, seared shrimp salad. As any good southerner, I ordered sweet tea. They have good sweet tea. Lunch was capped off by a free short pirate-wench guided tour of the historic building. It is recognized as the oldest house in Georgia. Pretty neato!
After getting our bellies full, we hopped back on the trolley. We got off at Stop 9 and walked over to the Savannah Bee Company for some honey tasting. Then back on at Stop 10 and back off at Stop 12 on River Street. The boys were in heaven. None of us are shoppers and although River Street is lined with stores, there were plenty of sampling opportunities along the way- Bryd’s cookies, The Peanut Shop of Savannah, River Street Sweets, Savannah Candy Kitchen, Blue Ridge Jerky, etc. So there was no complaining out of my crew. We thought about riding the Savannah Belle. It’s free public transportion on the river. It makes a 30 minute short round trip on the river. However, when we got there the line was pretty long so we decided to ditch it. But we were able to see one of the really large cargo ships sail by.
Then back on the trolley until the last stop, #16. Afterwards, the trolley takes you to the parking lot. They will also shuttle you to your hotel if you’re in town. We were pretty tired so we headed back to the campground for baths and some board games.
The next day we chilled at the campsite and went beach combing. In case you’re wondering what Mason is doing in the picture below, he’s decorating the palmetto/plam tree thing with rocks and twigs for a beachy Christmas tree. Ha! Yep, he is definitely my kid!! Trev and Tuck ran some football plays.
That afternoon we headed over to Fort Pulaski National Monument. The boys completed the Junior Ranger Program and got to see two historic cannon fire demonstrations. This was the first fort we visited that had a moat around it. This fort is significant because it was the first time rifled cannons were used making these large forts obsolete as they were no longer a match for that kind of damage. The magazines were then moved and buried under BPDs aka big piles of dirt.
The next morning we were up early in order to make a Walmart run and a stop at Camping World to get that new shower head that I mentioned was broke. I have no idea how it cracked but it was cracked right down the front of the head. Walmart had an Oxygenics RV shower kit so we grabbed it and skipped Camping World.
That meant we could head straight to our next destination, Jekyll Island.
The young man at the Clam Creek Picnic Area was very friendly. Trev and I were fascinated by the cargo ship that overturned in the shipping channel about three months ago. Apparently, it was carrying 4,200 new vehicles and heavy equipment when there was a problem was the ballast and it capsized. The ship is a total loss. Crazy to see.
The boys loved climbing on all the driftwood out at St Andrew’s beach. Crabbing and fishing was unsuccessful out at the Tidelands Nature Center unless you consider six tiny jellyfish a success.
Tuck found this intact crab shell and made him write his name in the beach. Ha! Ha!
The days at Jekyll were filled with school and laundry in the mornings along with a little fishing, driftwood climbing, and some beach combing in the afternoons. Pretty chill place. I totally forgot to take a picture of our campsite. Fail. Oh well. I will try to remember next time.
We had planned on visiting the Okefenokee Swamp. When I Goggled the swamp it showed it was only a little over an hour away but after some research, it appears Stephen C. Foster State Park is the best way to enter the park and that was on the other side of the swamp which meant two and a half hours one way. Yikes! Five hours was a bit much for a day trip so we ditched it. But stay tuned we might hit it on our way back.
We are in a Sunshine State of mind for our next stop.
Mason On The Move With Tucker In Tow 