Sunday, October 10, 2010

Jekyll Island

Hello again,

As seems to happen on weekends (and weekdays, and vacations...), I overestimated the time I had and underestimated the time all my chores would take. So this blog post will rely heavily on the picture's-worth-a-thousand-words principle.

Last weekend, we went to Jekyll Island with a friend and co-worker, Lester. (The week following was really busy with school groups, so I didn't have time to post until now.) Jekyll is a barrier island off the southern Georgia coast where another 4-H center is, and since the benefits of working for Georgia 4-H are not high monetarily, they offer current employees free housing at their other centers for vacations as part of the benefit package. We took advantage, which is good, because hotels on Jekyll are pretty pricey. It was once the exclusive vacation resort of a club of rich people including J.P. Morgan, Rockefellers, etc. The historic clubhouse still stands:


...and us poor folk get to enjoy it now - at least, it's coffee shop (no, this is not the 4-H center):



The golden orb weavers enjoy its grounds as well. This spider was larger than my palm (legs included, of course), and had a body nearly two inches long. They were everywhere on the island.


For all the planning that goes into having such a place open to the public, I do wish that they would grammar check signs:


We went for a walk on a trail on the north end of the island, trying to get to "boneyard beach," (more on that later), which we were only partially successful at. It was a pretty walk, though:


The whole island is pretty, though, so what should we expect?


That night we splurged for dinner at the "Rah Bar" on the pier. Yum!


The next day we got to boneyard beach proper. The north end of the island is being eroded away, while the south end is being added on to. (The 4-H center is at the south of the island, and when it was built decades ago, it was waterfront. Now it's a five minute walk to the water from there.) Boneyard beach is where the beach is eroding away from underneath trees:



Most of the trees down were huge!


Lester enjoyed them as well:




Finally, when we knew we really should be leaving so we could prepare for teaching the next day, we spent a little more time on the 4-H center's beach at the south end of the island. Lester birdwatched:


...and Jeff dug himself a jacuzzi:


Lester gave him a hand when the tide started getting closer:


But Lester wouldn't get into the jacuzzi when finished. The foam and dirt was kinda gross, but Jeff was really proud of his creation.

And then, we returned to Rock Eagle. The week was busy but fun, although I got a recurrence of the stomach infection I had before, so I was slowed down quite a bit. I'm on antibiotics -again-, which hopefully will knock it out finally. We're still loving our jobs, though, so life is very nearly perfect!

More another day.