A Trip to the Jekyll Island - Getting There

Claude celebrated his 71st birthday on Sunday, October 4th. This year we determined we would travel to Jekyll Island, Georgia. Claude went there when he was President of Kentucky League of Cities. I did not go and Claude knew I would love visiting this place. So we decided to take this time to go to Jekyll Island. We left Sunday. 

We first stopped in Georgetown to leave Papa a treat bag with lots of stuff to get him through the next week. I also made sure the birdfeeder was full. When I did that I looked in Papa's window and he was snuggled up under the blanket I gave him last Christmas. It has pictures of all our part of his family. He looked very comfortable and happy. Kim was in his room cleaning and she told him all the things I was yelling through the window at him. Like, don't eat all those sweets in one day!! 

Claude stopped at CVS. He had a coupon and we wanted to get him a can of nuts to eat as we drove on in the evenings in the hotel rooms. Then he purchased me a biscuit. We were ready to hit the road. It was about 11:30am. The radio was playing my thumb drive of music and the first song we heard was Jacob singing. What a positive way to leave with the sound of our sons lovely voice singing to us. This promised to be a great trip.

We saw an interesting thing when driving around Knoxville. It was a water tower made like a huge gold ball. 

We would take I-40 from Knoxville around and through the Smoky Mountains to Asheville, North Carolina. Some beautiful driving. 

Our destination Sunday evening was Arden, Georgia. This is where the airport is outside of Asheville. We would get on I-26 which is where we would need to drive from on Monday. 

We arrived at the Wingate by Wyndam and I went in to check us into our room. I watched something that blew my little mind. Background here is important. I worked for years at a Courtyard Marriott hotel in Maryland. I understand a lot of the good and bad things done at hotels. There was one person at the front desk and one clerk on duty. As I listened to them, I realized she was the only hotel person on duty. As she worked to check-in the person in front of me, she was having difficulty because his reservation was made by someone else through Expedia. The person who made the reservation was not arriving until the next day and there was some problem. The phone rang again and the clerk answered it and apparently someone was at the airport and needed to be picked up and brought to the hotel. Since she was the only person on duty, she had to do this driving. So the poor girl was answering all calls, working out problems with a reservation, had me waiting to be checked in and now had to go to the airport. This would leave no person on duty in a nice hotel. This is just not right. There really should be two people on duty especially at checkin time. The clerk stayed calm and got through the check-ins and left to pick up the person at the airport. I was surprised at this way of running a nice hotel. 

Time for a birthday dinner for my guy. His choice of course. Lots of options in this area. He picked Longhorn Steakhouse because...well...he wanted steak for his birthday. Nice meal. 

Back to the hotel to rest for the evening. Claude turned on the television and it didn't work. He tried several things and it still wouldn't go to a channel or recognize there were channels. I finally told him I thought it had been plugged into someone's device and it was still looking for that device. Sure enough, Claude checked the back again and it was set for using another device with the television. He made the change and we had television. Yea us!!

Monday, October 5th, we were on the road about 10am. We brought croissants from home that would have gone bad so we ate those for breakfast as we drove. 

First trouble for this day was Claude's glasses. He was talking to me and I looked to the side and thought something was odd. It dawned on me his glass lens was not solidly in the frame. He took his glasses off and gave them to me. Sure enough the lens popped right out. The frames needed a new screw. We did not have a repair kit with us. Claude only brought the one pair of glasses as they have the transition lenses and function as sunglasses as well. I gave him my sunglasses to drive in. We were able to find a Walmart. Claude bought a repair kit and talked with the people in their vision center. They said he could bring his glasses in and they would fix them if the screw didn't work. When Claude got back to the car with the repair kit, I realized he went in wearing my sunglasses. He didn't even think about them and only realized it when he was inside the store. I sent these pictures to our kids and asked them what they thought he should wear. What do you think? He is a confident male. He can pull off wearing either pair of glasses. He was very happy to get his repaired though. It was hysterical watching us doing this in my car. My hands underneath to hold things and catch any little tiny screw that might fall. Very coordinated effort to get that little bitty screw in place. We were singing that old song, "It Takes Two Baby!" when we finished this project.

We found a Taco Bell in the parking lot area and went through that drive-thru for lunch. As we pulled around to the front of Taco Bell, we found they had a nice patio area. We parked the car and ate our lunch on the patio with no one else around. Great!! Claude even found a gas station here with $1.69 per gallon for gasoline. We filled up and were on our way, repaired, fed and filled. Yea us!!

We were definitely out of the mountains as we drove this day. We were starting to see moss hanging from the trees. The road was often higher than the land on either side. This is often done to keep the road from flooding. We passed some interesting names for towns and businesses: Coosawatchie, El Cheapo Shell, Fuzzy's Tacos. I often wonder why people choose certain names for their business. 

These are pictures of the drive in Georgia to Jekyll Island. The land gets marshier and more swampy. Lots of water running through grasslands. Such a fun kind of beauty.

We drove over Turtle River. Filled my turtle lovin' heart with happiness.

Finally we crossed Jekyll Creek. This body of water separates Jekyll Island from the other islands. When you are on Jekyll Island there are two main highways, one on the Jekyll Creek side is called Riverview Drive and the other is on the Atlantic Ocean and is called Beachview Drive. Clever. 

We are smelling the ocean as we approach the entrance to Jekyll Island. You drive through this entrance and to a gate area where you pay for daily parking on the island. Then over a bridge onto Jekyll Island proper.

These are pictures of the drive after the bridge to Jekyll Island Resort where our room would be for the next three nights. Jekyll Island was, for a time, a winter home for the very wealthy in America. It was private for those who could pay the fee. Some of these people (Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc.) opted to have a 'cottage' built for them to live in instead of staying in the resort. The area of the resort and these cottages is the historic area of the island. We drove past four of these cottages before arriving at the resort. The pictures in this order are Moss Cottage (Claude and my favorite), Goodyear Cottage, Mistletoe Cottage and Indian Mound Cottage. Then we had our first view of the resort. Claude waited while I checked us unto our room. We booked a balcony room. Our room is the last balcony on the first floor on the far right of the last picture. Really, there is a tree in the picture but that is where we would reside.

We found our room delightful. We would really enjoy the closed in balcony. 

When Claude was on Jekyll Island before, he ate at a little restaurant that he really enjoyed. He couldn't remember the name. He remembered it was out-of-way. I received a map brochure of the island and studied it. I found a little place near the foot of the bridge we came across to get on the island. We decided to drive there and see if they had place of another couple of diners. We found Zachary's, they had place for us, we ate in a dining room all by ourselves! It was delicious eating seafood by the sea. Nice choice for our first night on the island and it was the restaurant Claude was remembering. 

There was a gentle rain falling when we finished dinner. We wanted to get a feel for our surroundings before going back to our room. We decided to drive around the entire island and find the spots we might want to spend some time seeing. We did get our first rainy peek at the Atlantic Ocean.

We returned to our room having a good feel for where things were. We sat on the balcony for the rest of the evening and plotted what we each really wanted to see so we could fill our time wisely.