The Bosslady and I enjoyed our summer vacation on St. Simons Island so much, we decided to return to the area between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  For the first twenty years we were married, the holidays meant both sets of in-laws visiting with all the attendant stress and hassle.  Letting someone else do the cooking was a welcome change of pace.

Our first stop was a quick one-nighter on Amelia Island, in the far northeast corner of Florida.  This community has its own unique history, but that’s a tale for another time.  The weather and lighting cooperated for me to get one memorable shot in, however.

Continuing up the coast on Boxing Day, we arrived at the Sea Island resort again.  In our summer visit, we stayed at The Lodge.  This time, we decided on The Cloister.  Upon arrival, you’re immediately reminded that the resort hosted the G-8 summit back in 2004.

The Cloister is the original hotel of the Sea Island resort complex, and dates to 1928.

The rear of the hotel backs up to the salt marshes.  Chartered fishing and wildlife viewing boats call this mini-marina home.

The lobby was decked out for the season.

A short walk from the hotel is the Beach Club, whose own holiday decorations took a decidedly nautical theme.

One of the seasonal activities offered by Sea Island is an introduction to falconry.  While guests are welcome to go out and meet and handle some of the resident raptors, at times the birds are brought to the hotel.  It’s difficult to articulate the look of astonishment on guests’ faces as they ponder a falcon, hawk, or owl up close.  One of our encounters was with a screech owl.  As his handler put it, “He’s eight inches tall fully grown, and perpetually grumpy.”  I think that The Bosslady has found her spirit animal.

One of the traditions at The Cloister over the years is that when a past or present head of state visits, the hotel has him (with the notable exceptions of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Margaret Thatcher, it’s always been a him) plant a tree.  This live oak was planted by Calvin Coolidge at the tail end of his second term.  It is not known if Cal had any comments about his contribution.

One of our side trips on our sojourn was to Fort Frederica on the north end of St. Simons.  Back in the early 18th century, the area between British Carolina and Spanish Florida was known as “The Debatable Land.”  James Oglethorpe attempted to settle the debate when he founded the colony of Georgia in 1733, placing his main seaport in Savannah.  A fort was erected on St. Simons to defend the new colony and the nearby sea routes.  The one time that the Spanish were feeling saucy, their incursion was repulsed at the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742.  The Spaniards deciding to stick to their knitting in Florida and points south led to the garrison’s abandonment in 1749, and the village that had grown near the fort was mostly gone by 1755.

To my untrained eye, this is a field.  280 years ago, it was the center of town.

The line of oaks mark one of the main streets.  The structure at left in the distance was the garrison’s barracks.

The King’s Battery — once the largest and most expensive fortification in British North America. Only parts of two storerooms remain today.

The real standout of our trip was the weather.  Afternoon temperatures were low 70s in gone to the moon degrees, with evening lows in the high 50s.  An added bonus was that the camellias were in bloom, with the pollinators doing their thing.

The few times that we could spy a cloud in the sky, it just made for a pretty sunset (as seen from our room’s balcony).

 

As I wrote in my last post, this place is growing on us.  The Bosslady has set a retirement target date of May or June 2026, and there’s a definite possibility that we’ll land in the area, or at least somewhere between Fernandina Beach, Florida and Midway, Georgia.  I’ll leave you with the words of one of the few American poets to have a big-ass bridge named after him:

Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
  Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
  And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
  And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn