Day 11

 Goodbye Savannah, hello St. George's Island!

This was a travel day as we drove 360 miles south to St. George's Island which is located in the Florida Panhandle, very close to Apalachicola.

We were on the road by 8:15 AM, and since our GPS suggested a route back through Savannah we decided to return to Café M for cappuccinos and pastries to go.  Why settle for Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts when there's Café M?

We avoided I-95 for all but 15 miles and kept to the back roads of Georgia.  Despite the monsoon rains, this route is a great way to see the real Georgia; the pine forests, pulp mills, cattle farms, and abandoned shops of small town main streets.

Georgia is the nation's largest producer of lumber, and primarily uses its vast pine forests—comprising over 14 trillion trees—as a sustainable, privately managed crop for the timber economy, generating over $35 billion annually. Pines are processed into construction lumber, paper/pulp products, and pine straw, with trees harvested every 10–50 years and immediately replanted.

Around 1 PM we stopped for lunch at Culvers, a fast food restaurant in Valdosta.  This was our first fast food indulgence on this trip, but sometimes you just have to go with this convenience when on a long road trip. Their burgers are pretty good too.

We arrived on St. George's Island around 5 pm.  The state park campground where we've stayed before did not have any vacancies when we first started to book places for the trip in January, so we lucked out and found this VRBO studio apartment on the bay side of the island.  

This is the view from the bed in our apartment!  Can't wait to see the sunset. Only rain and fog was visible when we arrived.  Over two inches of rain fell on us yesterday.

This was our 6th spring visit to the Forgotten Coast of Florida since 2017, so despite the weather we went to Up the Creek, a tradition passed on to me by my sister and her husband who loved spending a month here every spring.  

What makes this place so special is the view as shown in the photo below from our trip in May 2023.  Today's monsoon forced us to sit inside, and as you can see behind Joni, the place was empty.

Taken on May 2, 2023, our last visit to Up the Creek