DAY 7
-Saturday morning I got up and did another load of laundry at the laundry room while everyone got ready. We had decided to devote that day entirely to St. Simon's Island
So we went straight there. Since our original purpose in getting the bus in the first place was to see all the national parks, forests, seashores, and historic sites, our first stop was the historic Fort Frederica https://www.nps.gov/fofr/index.htm where we learned about a battalion that had been stationed at the fort in the early 1700s.
The short time they were there they set up a beautiful small town. Many of the foundations are still visible so that you can walk up and down the mossy oak covered streets of town and read about the owners and occupants of each home. We walked through the old fort itself.
Owen was instantly driven to the old canon.
And we stood underneath a 300 year old mossy oak tree!! That tree was there before they even settled the island! It was awe-inspiring. Pictures don't even do it justice.
After the visit to the fort everyone was hot so we decided to head to East Beach to check it out and hit the water. About 1/4 mile away from the beach we started asking ourselves if this was really where we wanted to be. There were solid people and shops and people and cars and more people and more shops. Yuck! This was exactly what we didn't want. So we circled through a parking lot where people were fiercely competing for parking spaces and headed right out of there. The kids were hot and just wanted to go swimming by that point, so we actually decided to head back to the RV park and grill some burgers while they went swimming. Just keep it low key, because relaxing and making memories is what it's all about. Covid kind of put a kink in those plans too when we drove past the pool and saw a bunch of kids in the water. So the kids turned the tv on and watched a couple of shows while we waited for them to leave. We kept sending a kid to occasionally check on the status over at the pool. Jared felt so bad for the kids having to wait to swim that he picked up some ice cream bars for them when he was at the grocery getting some food to grill out. Anyway, we finally got our chance at the pool and we just let them swim for like 3 hours and all the kids were happy. Jared made a yummy dinner of burgers and shrimp on the grill and brought it to us to eat at the pool. Pool side bbq- yum!!
The only real down-side to inland Georgia is the gnats! They're not just annoying gnats- they're biting gnats!! I heard from a local there that in a line pretty much south of Macon you can count on gnats pretty much year round. No one mentioned that in the reviews!! And they leave behind little mosquito bite-like itchy bumps. They aren't on the coast so much, but just a few minutes inland and they're there. Bug spray is a must. Or just stay on the beach :)
Now for a review of Coastal Georgia RV Resort in Brunswick, Georgia
We really enjoyed this park. They were very pet friendly, with a fenced in bark park that was actually just across the path from our rv spot. There are some palm trees throughout the park, but not much else in the way of trees. Each rv spot is divided by a shrubbery hedge, which is better than nothing. There were 2 very nice bathroom and shower houses. Very clean. The only downside was that they didn't have an on-demand water heater so the hot water runs out sometimes. Both shower houses also contained laundry facilities. We were very happy about that. The roads were paved and almost all of the concrete rv spots were pull-throughs. Nice. We really enjoyed the nice pool there. The proximity was nice- only maybe 15 minutes to Jekyll Island and 25 minutes to St Simon's Island so you could definitely stay there and visit several locations. We were interested in staying in the campground on Jekyll and may look into that for a return trip, but it was too booked for us this time. Staying on the campground on Jekyll would mean no driving at all since everything on the island could be accessed via bikes. Oh, and there was a sweet looking water park on Jekyll that was closed because it was off-season, but definitely worth looking into for a return trip.