St Simon’s Island, Georgia

After our visit to the Jacksonville Zoo on January 25, 2020, we drove north to St Simon’s Island in Georgia to spend a fun weekend with our friends Mason and Carol Pratt. Mason and Judy are former partners at the Portland-based law firm of Pierce Atwood. More to the point, however, Mason and Doug are long-time golf partners! Happily for Carol and Judy, they are both great cooks, and made a wonderful dinner at home our first night. Then we stayed up late for all of us, talking and catching up.

One of the fascinating parts of our visit was the overturned cargo ship in St Simon Island Sound. When we first approached Doug pointed out the ship in the channel. Brunswick, Georgia is a port in which thousands of autos are delivered – you can see them lined up. However, the shape of the ship did not look healthy and we figured out that it was a ship that was deliberately grounded back in September. The ship listed and the pilot wisely grounded it deliberately to avoid completely blocking the ship channel. It’s quite a story; if you look up the South Korean ship Golden Ray you can learn more about it.

On Sunday Mason and Doug headed out early for a round (or two?) of golf. Later we went to dinner at Nazzaro’s, a fine Italian restaurant.

On Monday, we drove Carol and Mason around Jekyll Island in Sylvie, so they had the camper van experience, at least a bit. They survived! Doug and Mason played another round of golf, then cooked a great dinner.

As of January 25, 2020, we had driven Sylvie more than 5,000 miles on this trip, and 6,600 miles overall! Not bad for about 5 months into this adventure!