I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the beach until I finally made it back to it.
We planned a trip to Tybee for Thanksgiving week with Dave’s parents (who live in New Hampshire and who usually come to Georgia for Thanksgiving) back in late summer/early fall–when COVID numbers were fairly low and we had some hope they might keep heading in the right direction.
But…they didn’t. So our planned extended family trip had to wait. But we decided to go ahead and go on our own since we’d already booked and paid a non-refundable deposit on the campground. And since we were really ready for a change of scenery.
I feel like we found our traveling during COVID groove on this trip, even more than the last one. It didn’t hurt that there were uncrowded beaches to hang out on everywhere and great weather, so there really wasn’t much reason to want to go inside anywhere.
We stayed at the only campground on Tybee, River’s End. I’ll do a full review later, but we really enjoyed it there, and the location was great–not right on the beach, but a quick walk to it, as well as to several restaurants.
We drove down the Saturday before Thanksgiving and headed back up on Wednesday, so it was a pretty quick trip, but all we really wanted to do was spend a few days staring at the ocean, so it worked out pretty well. We’d been to Tybee before as a day trip when we went to Savannah; you can read all about that here. That post will tell you more about touring the lighthouse and the small aquarium, which we didn’t do on this trip.
We started the trip by blowing out a trailer tire on the way down, less than an hour from the campground. Here’s what the kids and Fiesta the beagle look like waiting on roadside assistance:
But the roadside assistance folks got there very quickly (plug for AllState here), changed the tire right there on the side of the busy interstate (we sent them a gift card later to thank them), and we were back on our way in short order. We were still using the tires that came with our now 5 year old trailer, and, even though the tread was still fine, we knew they weren’t the best tires to start with and that we were pushing our luck. We got new tires on our way home a few days later.
So we got to the campground later than we’d hoped, but still fit in take out pizza and a walk to the beach that evening.
The next day we set out to see the beach for real, in daytime and everything, and ended up walking a long way. There are two beaches you can reach on foot with a short walk from the campground; the closest is River Beach, and we headed up that way and then walked along the shore until we got to the North Beach near the lighthouse and headed back to the campground from there.
“No pets on beach.” Sad. And true all over the island I believe. Which is one reason why, much as we like Tybee, we prefer Jekyll.
Fort Pulaski National Monument is just a short drive from the campground, and we wound up going there twice during our stay, the second time so we could bring Fiesta the Beagle to the very dog friendly site:
The terriers are not nearly so chill as the beagle, so she’s the one who more often gets to take advantage of such outings. She had a nice time.
We’ve been to Fort Pulaski twice before (read about it here); we’re big fans, but, honestly, we probably wouldn’t have loved it so much if this had been our first visit. There are the COVID-related changes you might expect–mostly that the visitor center is closed–but they’re also doing scheduled work on part of the site, including….the tunnels! And the tunnels are really cool, so that part was too bad. A trail that takes you out to a view of a small lighthouse was also closed. I believe there’s also a bike path that runs from Tybee to Fort Pulaski, and it’s under construction right now, too.
A tunnel, on another visit:
But it’s still a nice fort, even without tunnels and lighthouse walks. Or ranger talks.
We mostly just sort of wandered around the fort. On our first visit, we also took the short North Pier trail to see this 19th century battery and the pier where supplies for the fort used to arrive. It was very buggy.
Our second full day we went into Savannah to see Bonaventure Cemetery. It’s a huge Victorian cemetery, a big tourist draw in Savannah, and we’d never been there before. Those Victorians really knew how to do a cemetery. Step one: Spanish moss.
Usually there are tours with actual tour guides, but those aren’t going on right now. There’s an app you can (buy and) download, which we did, with varying success. We had a little trouble figuring out where we were supposed to go next, and the app would start talking out of nowhere sometimes about something a row or two over. But it was sometimes helpful, and anyway, it’s a lovely place to wander around for awhile, guide or no guide.
Conrad Aiken is buried at Bonaventure, and I know a lot more about Conrad Aiken now than I used to, thanks to the app:
After Bonaventure, we headed downtown to (get Dave’s bike fixed; we’ve had bad luck with bikes on trips lately) and get some ice cream from Leopold’s. There was a very long line as usual, but what are you going to do?
Dave and I left the kids back at the campground and did more beach walking all by our grown-up selves that evening, ending with a beer outside at Gerald’s Pig and Shrimp while we waited for our take-out order to be ready.
On our third and last full day, we rode our bikes down to the other side of the island to check out some different beaches. I wasn’t sure how biking would go, because there aren’t dedicated bike paths on Tybee like there are on Jekyll….but they have a very well-marked bike route along very quiet side streets, and we didn’t encounter many cars at all and felt totally safe.
It’s a small island, so you can get pretty much anywhere by bike: from the campground down to the downtown area by the pier with lots of restaurants and shopping, it’s about 3 miles.
The bike route doesn’t spend much time along the shore, but it does give you a different perspective of the island by winding through the quirky residential areas. We got a much better feel for Tybee on this trip than on our short day trips in the past, and I was more charmed by it than I expected to be.
When we made it to the end of the bike route, we parked the bikes and set off for more beach walking–all the way to the southern end of the island.
We grabbed some take-out and ate on the pavilion by the beach where there are a bunch of picnic tables (and public bathrooms). This was by far our coldest and windiest day, but we managed. After lunch, we said hi to these birds (grackles, I think?)
before heading back to the campground:
For our last evening, Dave and I walked over to pick up dinner from North Beach Bar & Grill and had one more beer on the deck:
And I finally got some pictures of the lighthouse that we’d been walking past the whole trip. We didn’t do it this time, but the lighthouse is a great place to tour. You can read about the time we did go inside here.
Ah, that’s a nice, soothing picture to end with. Beaches are great.
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