Sapelo Island

We went to  Sapelo Island yesterday, it's another of Georgia's Barrier Islands, and is about 40 miles south of us.  You have to take a boat out to it and then do a bus tour, though if you rent one of the places on the island you can wander around on your own.  

The island is owned by the state of Georgia, except for about 400 acres that make up the Hog Hammock Community, a community made  up of the descendants of slaves who once worked on the island.  There are about 45 full-time residents left who  are primarily Gechee/Gullah.

The University of Georgia maintains classrooms and workstations on the island too.

The island was originally settled by Indians, then 

the  Spanish followed by the French.  In the late 1700's Thomas Spalding built a plantation there to grow sea island cotton and sugar cane.

This house was rebuild in 1912 by Howard Coffin who made a fortune in cars and then he sold it to R.J.Reynolds  the tobacco giant in the 1930's.

  It's now known as the Reynold's Lodge House and groups of at least 16 can rent it for $170 a night for a 2 day minimum stay.  My favorite room was the Solarium.  Very Art Deco.  I also liked the library, a little book envy here or perhaps just bookcase  envy.

The lighthouse was great, originally built in 1820, mostly destroyed during the hurricane of 1898 and restored in the 70's, I think.  Of course I wanted to sit and paint it but being

 on a tour I couldn't so we'll either have to go back and stay on the island, which I'd like to do or I'll have to paint it from the picture I took.

Our last stop was out at Nanny Goat Beach, picked up a few sea shells, I'm collecting shells from every beach we visit and I'm going to make a wreath out of them.  It always amazes me to see miles of empty beach with no one on them.  People whiz down the Interstate headed to Florida with its packed beaches and don't have a clue as to the beautiful beaches here in Georgia. My husband always says, "Keep on driving, hope they never discover our coastline."

So all in all a nice trip, given the fact that Mac and I both hate tours.  Our tour guide Gloria was very good, very knowledgable, and the other people on the tour weren't too bad except for one lady who crawled about every where, laying on the ground taking "artistic" photos of everything.

We then went to lunch in Darien to a restaurant we'd discovered last year and enjoyed hugely only to have a very unhappy experience, but I'll Blog about that later.