Rain Stops, Weather Improves Now at Jekyll Island

Since we never got to go biking in VA, the trip was moved up 4 days from our original plan to get to Jekyll Island 0n Monday 11/19. We had reservations so we needed to find something else to do for the 4 days between Greg’s and Jekyll. The last night at Greg’s it rained another 2-1/2”, making the week not only cold but over 5” of rain fell.

So our new plan was to overnight in Augusta, GA and take their canal trail the runs between the Savannah River and the canal that made Augusta boom in the late 1800’s. Last year we toured the museum so this year it would just be our first bike ride of the trip.

The trail starts here at the dam that diverts the water into the canal and follows between them into the city of Augusta. This year we missed a turn where we went last year and only biked for 12 miles which was fine for our first ride. The trail is gravel and dirt in places so it’s slow but even with all that rain only a day before, the random puddles in the trail were all small enough to pass by without going into the mud. The river was high, if you compare with the pictures from Last Year’s Blog. It was only about 50^oF but sunny.

I checked the map and there was a very nice small State Park on SR25 called Magnolia Springs. I checked and even though it was a weekend there were plenty of sites available.

After a short drive to camp we took a trail walk from the campground along the lake over a boardwalk, temperatures now finally were in the mid 60’s. A family campground with lots of kids starting their Thanksgiving holiday a little early.

The lake was too small to take a canoe ride but was very pretty, But the big surprise to us was that this was the site of the largest Confederate prison during the civil war. Camp Lawton, near Millen, Georgia, housed 10,000 Union prisoners at the end of the Civil War. When General Sherman’s forces approached, prisoners and guards fled quickly, leaving the remains of the camp—and even its exact location—lost to history. But a Yankee prisoner had descriptions and sketches allowing them to locate the approximate site location.. PBS did a story about  a group of archeologists who spent 3 day here 10 years ago with a team and helped locate artifacts and it’s exact location. This in this is their  one hour video. Lost Civil War Prison

We still had a evening to kill so we drove about halfway to Jekyll and did a Walmart overnight in Jesup, GA. We arrived early to the Jekyll Island Campground. The camp itself is crowded but the bike trails on the island are great. I picked up my new inverter and installed it in place of the one that went bad last week. After a short rest, Judi and Larry Fordyce arrived and set up their tent. They left home about the same time we left  and have been visiting friends and Larry’s mother in Cape Coral, FL. They are now on their way home to get ready for skiing. They took us out to a wonderful dinner at the #1 rated restaurant on the Island, Driftwood Bistro. It was a fantastic meal at reasonable prices.