Thanksgiving on Jekyll Island (Mostly a Photo Diary)

Travel dates: Thanksgiving, 2021

Taking a quick break from last summer’s trip to fill in a bit about our school year travels. We didn’t do a ton of that, but we spend a wonderful week on Jekyll Island with Dave’s parents. We were at the Jekyll Island Campground and they had a condo rental nearby. This was our third RV trip to Jekyll, so I’ve already blogged about it pretty extensively here and here. And talked about it on the RV Atlas podcast here. But I never want to pass up a chance to post a bunch of pretty pictures of Jekyll, so here I am, blogging about it yet again!

There’s only one place to camp on Jekyll, at the Jekyll Island Campground.You can read my full review of it in this post, but this trip was our first time staying more toward the back of the campground, and we really liked that area and our site (F20):

Our previous Jekyll trips were in early April for spring break and then the week between Christmas and New Year’s, so we got to see the island at a little bit different time of year. The crowds were interesting; it was very quiet the first half of the week, but the Friday after Thanksgiving was probably the most crowded we’ve ever seen things. When we went the week after Christmas, we were able to catch a lot of holiday-specific stuff, but none of that started up this time until the Friday after Thanksgiving, which meant just one day of holiday merriment for us. We did the drive through light show that night, and it was very congested with big traffic backups. But pretty!

We had done a dolphin boat tour on a previous trip, but, sadly, did not see any dolphins that time. We decided to give it another shot on this trip and were very glad we did. It took a long time to find the dolphins, but once we did it was awesome; they hung out right by the boat for a good long time. We booked our trip for right near sunset, so the ocean was looking extra pretty as well.

Of course we went to Driftwood Beach and took many mandatory pictures:

Jekyll is super dog friendly, beaches included; that’s one thing we love about it (as do our dogs):

Great spot for letting your beagle’s ears fly out!

I booked a private ranger walk for our group, and that was a fabulous experience; we got to see parts of the island we would never have found on our own. I found out about the option to schedule a private walk when I realized there were no public ones happening during our visit; it’s a great (and affordable!) option, and we were able to customize our tour to our group’s interests.

Ari is away at college in Minnesota and had classes Monday and Tuesday Thanksgiving week, so he flew into Jacksonville, and Dave made the drive to pick him up very late Tuesday night. It made traveling that week pretty complicated; we might not attempt it again as long as we have kids in college without the full week off (Milo is going to Vanderbilt next year and they’re off the whole week, so that will be nice). But it was great to see him, even though it was only for a few days:

 

And it was also great to spend lots of time with Dave’s parents:

This was our first Thanksgiving not at home probably since Ari was a toddler; usually Dave loves cooking a turkey at home and all that kind of thing…but going out to a restaurant and then walking along the beach after was a pretty great way to spend the day, too.

What else?! We went to nearby Saint Simon’s Island one day and met a pelican:

And visited Ford Frederica and got a junior ranger badge:

We showed Nana and Grandpa the secret rope swing. Nana is braver than I am and tried it out:

We did some biking (and tested out the new bike rack for the trailer, which worked GREAT!)

So, all in all, another wonderful trip to Jekyll. It inspired me to check for openings at the campground for the week after Christmas this year…but there aren’t any 🙁