Retired Nomads: Jekyll Island, GA

Friday October 20th – we returned to Jekyll Island. The tide was too high for the side of the island we started with, but we got some shots of Gulls.

Laughing Gulls lined up on the fishing pier

juvenile Black-backed Gull amongst all the Laughing Gulls

one of these is not like the others

Laughing Gull

juvenile Black-backed Gull

Sandwich Tern with the black bill with yellow tip (rest are Laughing Gulls)

Common Yellow-throat

Snowy Egret

notice the 2 guys sitting on the open bay (easier to see in the web albums)

We left there and stopped Great Dunes Beach.

Greg on the boardwalk to the beach

Sanderling

Ring-billed Gull

Sanderling

lighthouse on Cumberland Island way in the distance - we visited there at the beginning of this trip

We headed back to the soccer field where there is a boardwalk out to the beach. We walked quite a while along the beach looking for shore birds. As we were leaving a woman stopped us and asked if we were with any kids. We said “no” and she said “then you will have to leave, we have kids here.” Huh? It’s a birding hotspot and no one mentioned you couldn’t use that path to get to the beach. You do have to walk through the soccer area to get to it. We found out that they require you to register before using their boardwalk to the beach.

Coopers Hawk

Sanderlings in the surf

Tree Swallows

We took a break and went to lunch. We did go back to the same restaurant and we split a large shrimp basket with sweet potato fries. These Georgia shrimp are incredibly good. Large and meaty and sweet and fresh!

After lunch we headed to the area where we saw the trams and asked what times they go and they had one leaving in 3 minutes so we hurried to get on the trolley before it left. It was about 90 minutes and we got to tour 2 “cottages”. No photos were allowed inside the cottages. The rest was a narrated drive around their historic district.

Families with names like Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Pulitzer, and Baker built elegant cottages designed for comfort in Victorian architectural styles. Villa Marianna was the last of 18 cottages to be completed, in 1928.

start of the tram tour

Marty Jekyll - famous cat on the island and has his own facebook page

duBignon Cottage - we toured this one

Sweet Shop

we toured Moss cottage

Moss cottage

Mistletoe

Millionaire's Indian Mound Cottage - once owned by Rockefeller

San Souci - now a hotel

Jekyll Island Club (now a hotel)

Crane Cottage - largest & most lavish cottage

Villa Ospo

Cherokee Cottage

It was the end of the tour and since the Faith Chapel was closing in a short while, they offered to let anyone off there if they wished to tour it before it closed. So, that worked well for us and a couple of others on the tram.

Faith Chapel still functions as a church and has 6 services a week to accommodate the congregation size. The interior and exterior walls are shingled, with gargoyles that are replicas of the ones at Notre Dame Cathedral. It has beautiful stained-glass windows. One is "David's Window" which was made by Louis Comfort Tiffany. (and is signed by Tiffany) The other stained glass windows are by Maitland Armstrong.