Tomorrow will be two weeks since Ed and I left Stuart on Finito. This is about the time I feel myself disengage from the world. Don’t get me wrong, I am still curious. Every day I check the news and see what’s going on but it’s kind of like watching a movie. The sagas and the players continue, whether it’s the City of Stuart, Martin County, or the powers of Tallahassee and the White House. But as my eyes scan the marshlands,  I am reminded “this too shall pass…”

Today the temperature has dropped from 96 to 90 degrees, and Finito is moving through Georgia’s Golden Isles.

“It feels like fall is here!” I yell to Ed. He rolls his eyes laughing.

The Golden Isles consist of four huge barrier islands: Jekyll, St. Simon, Sea, and Little St. Simon located between Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia. The Altamaha River’s Inlet breaks through here draining over one-quarter of the state of Georgia. Incredible, vast moving waters!  Thousands of fiddler crabs come out from their holes at low tide and the dolphins move into to eat fish as the tide rises. Tides range from 7 up to 10 feet.

Today these golden lands are wild, but from the late 1700s until the American Civil War, rice plantations filled these quiet marshes creating some of the most valuable agricultural rice production on earth. Appropriately, these lands are now part of the Gulla Geechee Cultural Heritage Cooridor as they could not have profited without the Gulla people’s expertise.

Oh the South….

As soon as Ed and I arrived in St. Augustine along the Intracoastal Waterway it became a different world. South Florida faded away and The South slowly came into focus. I do love it here. There is something about the marshes, the tides and the strong currents. Yesterday a flock of twenty rosette spoonbills flew overhead. I feel nature all around, all the time. My “crabbiness” has subsided and yes, I immediately walked to ATHENA, the Greek restaurant, and ordered Tzatziki when Ed and I got off the dock in St. Augustine!

As I look out the window there are small and large islands everywhere. In fact it looks like the land is being born from the water. Brown pelicans and royal terns compete, diving over and over again for fish. Now and then an osprey or eagle joins the group. The water is moving and is not clear as it holds sediment but is clean. No muck from Lake Okeechobee! The quartz sand that makes up the beaches, islands and sandbars of this area originally came from the Appalachian Mountains pouring through the giant Altamaha River. Dramatic is an understatement.

So far my favorite place along the way has included Cumberland Island a federally protected national seashore between Amelia Island, Florida and St. Marys, Georgia. Although Cumberland is not part of the Golden Isles it lies just before them if you are going north on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Today, we will stop at Sunbury, Georgia,  once a thriving port city only second to Savannah, but now a “ghost town.” British forces captured the town, burning it down during the Revolutionary War.

The tide is coming up. Again, the only constant is change.

Diesel and Okee? 🙂