Brunswick, GA

The Brunswick area consists of a bunch of little islands all hooked together. I’d been looking forward to this stop for awhile.

One of the main reasons I scheduled this stop was to see the sea turtles. We went during the off season, but we found the Georgia Sea Turtle Center where we could learn all about sea turtles and even get to see some of them. The main focus of the GSTC is to rehabilitate the turtles and get them back into their natural habitat. They also take in any straggler hatchlings and keep them until they’re big enough to head out to sea the next year.

You can go in and look at the tanks with their patients. There are charts for each patient that tells why they’re there and the steps being taken to help them. We got there right before their last tour and got to see them feed the turtles!

We found another fort to mosey through. This one is Fort Frederica National Monument.

It was worth the trip just to see all of the old oaks and Spanish moss. The fort itself is mostly gone, but they’ve got a few foundations they’ve found and there are records that tell them where everything was and who owned what. We enjoyed walking through the grounds. I would definitely recommend it!

The Junior Ranger program here was one of the boys’ favorites so far. In the pic above you can see them with the bag that’s given out with the Junior Ranger booklets.

The bag contained various items and instruments used to complete the booklet.

We also got to play some pub games that would’ve been found during the 1700s. We’ve decided we need to make one of these.

The boys earned four badges and one patch. I somehow missed getting one of the badges in the picture. Of course, it was the coolest one…because it was a little different. I’ll try to get a picture of them together again and post it up on our Instagram.

We also went to Tidelands Nature Center where we got to touch an alligator.

The boys were impressed the set of chompers on this guy.

We also got to see this little stingray up close!

We found two very cool beaches! The first one is Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island. It was so fun to climb around on all of the driftwood. It was also a great picture place. We got some good family shots at this beach.

The other beach also happened to be on Jekyll Island, but for the life of me…I can’t remember the name of it. It was a great beach…not too many people there.

So…it doesn’t look like much. It’s called Brunswick Stew. I’ve seen it since Maine, but didn’t try it until North Carolina and I’ve been hooked ever since. I thought it only fitting that I had a bowl of Brunswick stew while in Brunswick. It starts with smoked meat. I’ve had chicken, pork, and beef…any and all combinations of the three. It always has corn and usually lima beans. From there it varies. The best I’ve had was from High Cotton in Kitty Hawk, NC. Hands down the best. I’m going to have to try to make my own version of Brunswick stew!

We stayed at a great little park called Blythe Island Regional Park. It was awesome! Nice big spot, pull through, full hookups…they even offered cable at no extra cost! We would totally stay there again. This park also had a healthy community of squirrels. And boy howdy…those squirrels loved to tease our cats!! It was extremely entertaining!

I even found a few pretties! Love these pink flowers with the Spanish moss and the oaks!

That’s all we had time to do. We could have spent at least another week just exploring all the different beaches and forts in the area!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016