Road Trip - Jekyll Island

We left Washington DC on Tuesday morning and headed south as quickly as we could. We had a long drive to Jekyll Island, Georgia and we were excited to experience a bit of warmth. We had left temperatures of -15C in Canada. Washington had not been much warmer. In fact we were downright frozen at times as the wind blew and the temperature hovered around zero.

Georgia, we figured, had to be better. Plus Jekyll Island is less than an hour from Florida. The land of palm trees and orange groves.

Before we reached Jekyll Island, we had to drive through the beginnings of the winter storm that was bearing down. It didn't take long before we saw a few snowflakes, then a few more. And finally, we were driving down the 95 in weather that could rival any Canadian storm. I drove and Doug stalked the weather channel. We could see from the radar map that, just before Savannah, the snow would turn to rain and then, by Jekyll Island, it would all be over.

As we headed south, we passed fleets of snow removal trucks and hydro trucks heading north, ready to help. And when we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant, people were taking pictures of the weather that they were just not used to seeing...or driving in.

We made it to the island just before the sun set. It was not exactly the balmy weather we had hoped for but it was dry and safe which was, by that point, much more important. The weather network over the next two days told us how lucky we were to get out when we did. The capital was shut down. Cities ground to a halt under an inch of ice and a foot of snow.

We had made it safe and sound and we had a day and a half to explore. So explore we did.

We found the famous driftwood beach.

We visited the Georgia Sea Turtle Centre where we learned that the cold weather we were in the midst of was causing all sorts of turtles to experience cold shock. Cold shock is like hypothermia and the turtles become so cold that they can't move. They just float to the surface of the water. If they are rescued in time, they can be rewarmed and saved. Three large turtles were arriving at the centre later that day. 

We had a lovely lunch at the famous Jekyll Island club. 

And we braved the elements to flex our photography muscles. 

Thursday morning, we got up and headed out for our second run of the trip. A 12k run took us on a loop of about 3/4 of the island. Afterwards, we packed up the car and headed to our third destination: Haines City, Florida. 

It had to be warmer there. 

It just had to.