Hiding on Jekyll

Jekyll Island, GA -- We are on the move again. Tonight, our little home on wheels is nestled under a canopy of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss on a tiny island off the coast of Georgia. The crackle of campfires and the scent of wood smoke evokes camping memories from way back, but the setting is completely new to us. Tomorrow we will have a better look at this historic spot, but for now we will rest from a long day's drive.

Our day started very happily with breakfast at Emily's Restaurant just north of the Dunedin RV Park with our friends Paul and Karen -- one last opportunity to trade stories of bygone escapades with an interesting couple! There wasn't much for us to do to ready ourselves for the trip, since most of the wrapping up stuff happened the night before.

There was a slight mishap last evening. We've been parked on an RV site that belongs to our friend Anna, and she asked us to leave the keys to her storage shed with a permanent park resident till she returns in the fall. They've been hanging on a nice key rack we installed on the wall just behind the driver's seat in the RV. I reached up to get them and somehow I didn't grab them firmly enough and they fell -- not handily on the floor. Oh no. They slipped down a narrow crack behind the driver's seat against the bathroom wall -- to a resting place visible by flashlight, fortunately, but well out of reach of my fingers in a space only a centimetre wide! However, I managed to fish them out with a plastic hook I'd thought might come in handy some day, wired to three twist ties hooked end to end. I coaxed the hook down to where the keys were wedged and looped the ring to our great relief. It was like a scene from a sit com!

We pulled out of our site at about nine this morning and headed north following the west coast. We followed Highway 54 eastward till it joined the Interstate 75 and turned north again towards Ocala. This route took us past Bushnell, where we'd spent a couple of very pleasant winters at the cottage of our late friend Carl. When we got to Ocala, after a quick lunch in a mall parking lot, we turned east again on Highway 50 till we reached the I-95, and followed it northward, circled Jacksonville and crossed into Georgia. The weather was fine and, while there were plenty of large transport trucks, the traffic flowed well.

The landscape changed from jungly pines, tangled with vines, and scrubby palmettos, to wide open flatlands as we approached Jekyll Island. There were Turtle Crossing signs every mile or so, but the only thing we saw was a racoon that quickly turned back from instant death when he saw us coming.

The campground literature said to follow their signs rather than our GPS directions, but their signs were not in evidence when we crossed the bridge from the mainland. So we ended up approaching the campground at the northern end of the island the long way around on the beach side instead of the more direct river side route, but it gave us a chance to see some residential and resort areas along the way. We're looking forward to seeing more.

[Note: Having trouble uploading my photos. Will try again later.]