Our Great Loop guidebook gave us three options for our first stop in Georgia, all pretty close to one another - 2 summer-beach-resort islands and an inland town. After getting some advice from a former colleague of mine who hails from Georgia and currently lives in Atlanta, we decided to spend one night on Jekyll Island and possibly have the opportunity to visit the beach and the next night in Brunswick, the inland town, where we'd be able to do another round of provisioning.
Unfortunately, the day before we arrived on Jekyll Island, the county governor had mandated that all the beaches be closed - so we decided to do a bike ride up the island along the coast, but we were not actually able to set foot on the beach. So sad!
One of the island restaurants had converted their menu to 100% take-out so we stopped there to pick up some food on the way home. The empty box on the back of David's bike in the photo above was for carrying our takeout! Despite still being very warm out, the skies darkened and we even worried about being rained on as we returned to the boat, which we were completely unprepared for. However, we were lucky and it remained dry.
The next day, we headed out toward Brunswick. This was a pretty short ride. At the north tip of Jekyll Island, we had been prepared for an unusual sight...a container ship wreck. It has apparently been there for several months while they try to figure out how to remove it. They are working on building a containment net to then cut it into pieces and cart it out, bit by bit.
The Brunswick marina was really nice (free unlimited laundry and PBR on tab in a clubhouse, of which we did not partake) and the town seemed really cute. Unfortunately, basically everything other than the grocery and liquor stores are closed, and we are pretty much trying to stay to ourselves at this point, so we contented ourselves with evening strolls, some pole practice in the afternoon, I enjoyed a very bug-filled freestyle dance at sunset, and a couple of quiet evenings to ourselves on the boat with video games, guitar, Netflix, and wine.
The lovely weather and complete lack of anything of any altitude keeps giving us great opportunities for lovely sunsets, though.
People keep asking us if we should abandon the trip in the wake of the pandemic. While it's disappointing that we can only walk around most of the spots we're seeing instead of partaking in any of the culture, we still feel that it's better than the alternative of staying cooped up in our condo in Kirkland. So, until we start getting locked out of places to stay, we'll keep progressing north and hope that, someday, things are safe to open again.