Skidaway Island — Day 1

We spent three days at Skidaway Island State Park. This is day 1 at the park.

Skidaway Island State park is about 20 miles from Savannah, GA. It is along a tidal estuary and marshes, but occupies only a tiny bit of Skidaway Island and is surrounded by residential development. As you are hiking the trails, every once in a while you could see houses where you would expect more woods. But it is a pleasant park none the less...nice enough that we decided to stay an extra day and leave on Monday.

We managed to walk all of the trails over the days we were there. Although the mileage wasn't great, they were interesting walks, especially where they overlookied the river.  Today we did the  Big Ferry Trail and loop, which starts down a wide old unpaved road. It used to be the road to the ferry landing in the time before there was a bridge to Skidaway Island. I'll bet it was a much quieter place then.

Once we reached the landing, the trail went along the marsh to an observation tower. Ellen and Sally were looking for birds, of course, especially a Clapper Rail, which they hadn't seen yet. (They still haven't seen any). The trail then curved around the edge of the park through a series of pre-historic shell middens. They sure ate a lot of oysters back then. From there it went  out to a Civil War era earthworks and a mortar emplacement. The Confederates went to a lot of effort to build defenses to repel attacks from the sea, but the Union came by land and they were never used after being dug out. As we completed the loop, we could see the nearby neighborhoods in the background. So much for being in the forest.

On Thursday afternoon, Harry had gone down to the park's visitor center and reported that there were bird feeders behind it. This piqued Ellen and Sally's interest and they spent a fair portion of this afternoon there. Harry and I hung around camp and read.

We also went over to visit a couple parked near us with a Roadtrek 210 Popular. It is a model which is a bit wider and two feet longer than Speedy (also newer). They had been out traveling for six months so far, starting in California. I'd wanted to see a 210 to see if there was any advantage over Speedy. Aside from a fully enclosed toilet and a little more room inside, there isn't  much. It actually looked liked there was less storage.

It was warm enough for us to have our first dinner by the campfire in several days, so we did.