A Walk on the Beach

On Wednesday afternoon, after a nice lunch at the hotel and a short rest, we hauled ourselves downstairs and took a shuttle to the beach, on the Atlantic Ocean. It was as calm and beautiful as a calm day at Port Alto. Dolphins were visible as we drove up, but by the time we had walked across the dunes and the wide beach we didn't see them anymore. 

Instead, we concentrated on looking for sand dollars. And we found plenty of them!  We had been cautioned by a shop lady to leave the live ones,so we examined them for fuzzy bits. Any with fuzzy bits would live to see another day! 

We were quite interested in their habits and vowed to look it up...but I don't that anyone has done that yet. 

After a nice time on the beach, we made our way back to the pavilion and used the courtesy phone to call for the shuttle to pick us up. 

Back at the hotel, we cleaned up a bit and then walked to the wharf across the road where we had wonderful seafood dinners. The Latitude restaurant overlooks the eastern end of the intercostal canal where it meets the Atlantic. The canal is called the Jekyll River locally. 

A Walkabout on Jekyll Island

This was our first full day at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. We have lovely rooms in this old, elegant hotel. You can probably google it to find out about the history. It's too late and I'm too tired to spend much time typing that on my phone for you!

But, from a brochure, "Founded in 1886, the original Jekyll Island Club was a private retreat for a select group of America's wealthiest families. A number of them built spacious "cottages," some of which now make up the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. 

Wanda, Dee, and Carole posed for me as we began our walk around the hotel property. 

Magnificent, moss hung trees are every where you look. It really is beautiful here. 

One of our stops on the property was the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. You can visit the website at: http://georgiaseaturtlecenter.org

We visited a number of shops while walking about the property. I think Wanda and Dee plan to ride bikes in the morning. I think Carole and I do not plan to participate in that activity.  

A walkabout on Jekyll Island

Subject: A walkabout on Jekyll Island

This was our first full day at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. We have lovely rooms in this old, elegant hotel. You can probably google it to find out about the history. It's too late and I'm too tired to spend much time typing that on my phone for you!

But, from a brochure, "Founded in 1886, the original Jekyll Island Club was a private retreat for a select group of America's wealthiest families. A number of them built spacious "cottages," some of which now make up the Jekyll Island Club Hotel.

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Wanda, Dee, and Carole posed for me as we began our walk around the hotel property.

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Magnificent, moss hung trees are every where you look. It really is beautiful here.

One of our stops on the property was the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. You can visit the website at: http://georgiaseaturtlecenter.org

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This is the information about Caton, one of the turtles in the rehab center. He weighed 70 pounds when he went into rehab nearly 3 years ago. I think his current weight is listed on the chart.

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We visited a number of shops while walking about the property. I think Wanda and Dee plan to ride bikes in the morning. I think Carole and I do not plan to participate in that activity.

From Houston to Jekyll Island

This morning Dee woke up with a very puffy area on the inside corner of her eye. It really bothered her...I thought she was going to need an eye patch to hide it from view even though I kept trying to reassure her that unless she pointed it out, no one else would notice it. I kept offering to lance it for her, but she declined...and thank goodness for that as we had a fairly bumpy ride most of the way.

A driver met us at the airport and drove us to Jekyll Island, about an hour from the Jacksonville airport. We will stay here at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel for three nights. We're on our own for tonight and Wednesday night. On Thursday we meet the rest of the tour group and then have dinner with them. The actual tour will begin on Thursday morning.

There are a few photos of our afternoon somewhere in this post. The photo of Wanda, Carole, and Dee busily photographing in all different directions is a favorite of mine, so far. I'm sure there will be more.

On our way

You can't tell by the happy photos above, but both Dee and I felt like we didn't know what we were doing for much of the day. The packing at our respective houses went agonizingly slow. I was up and down the stairs countless times. In and out of almost every room in the house...all day long.

We intended to leave at 2, but changed it to 3. I was finally ready by 3:30. We stopped for a little shopping at Charming Charlie and then went to Pappadeaux for dinner.

An old friend, Arla, came in with a friend and was led to the table next to ours. What a nice surprise! We hadn't seen Arla in years, since we gave up our theatre tickets.

So, now we are at La Quinta...ready for bed and a good night's rest before flying off to Jekyll Island tomorrow. Wanda and Carole will meet us there late tomorrow afternoon. We will spend two days there on our own. The tour starts on the 12th.

We will be touring Savannah and then we'll travel up to Charleston where the tour ends on the 19th. I know we're going to have a wonderful time!

Happy Easter and all that jazz!

What I should be doing is packing...instead of looking at Facebook and blogs.  And yet, here I am.  Well, I'll get to it in a few minutes.

We had Easter dinner at Carolyn's, as usual.  Robin and Chad arrived in time to visit for a couple of hours before they headed to Chad's grandmother's for dinner with his side of the family.  The Garners and the Bubelas all attended 7 AM mass.  I'm not sure when the Easter bunny took care of business, but when they all arrived back from church, both families had lots of eggs to find.

Meanwhile, I was busy in my kitchen.  My job was the ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, and roasted broccoli and cauliflower.  It was all ready to be transported by 9:30 or so.  Of course, by the time I got there, all the eggs had been found.  Kate lured me outside, however, and instructed me to close my eyes and bend over at the waist.  I did so, unsuspecting of any shenanigans, and was rewarded by a confetti egg being cracked into the back of my head...followed by peals of laughter from Kate.  Monkey!

Carolyn and I worked quickly to finish preparing our dinner...she made two pans of cornbread, macaroni and cheese for any fussy eaters, and a poppyseed cake.  Wendy brought a big salad with all sorts of add-in veggies. We definitely had full plates!

We were hurrying up every chance we got because the Bubelas had an afternoon Easter egg hunt to attend and Carolyn wanted Jax to be able to take his nap.  So, we planned to serve dinner before noon and have Jax upstairs by one.  And I think that actually happened.

The bad thing, though, was that Jax missed Wendy's birthday cake.  He LOVES singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles.  For the last few birthdays (not his) he has been the one to blow the candles out.  As soon as that last note is sung, he starts blowing.  The actual birthday honoree has to be pretty quick to blow their own candles out.  It's very funny to see.  He always makes sure he's right by the birthday honoree.  But, we had to sing and blow without him this time.

It has become a tradition lately for us to have the wrong age on our cakes, which may prove to be a problem at some time in later years.

We ended our time together with a rousing game of duck, duck, goose, with the added option of smashing a confetti egg on the goose!

And now I'll go start organizing and packing for my 10 day trip to Georgia and South Carolina with Dee, Carole, and Wanda.