Kaleberg Archive for Keyword: georgia, Page: 1

01/31/26 - Guale Preserve One of our favorite places to wander on Big St. Simons Island is the Guale Preserve. Coming from the Northwest, it's exotic country with its flat terrain, gnarled trees, sandy soil and palmettos. The first part of our walk had a bit of up and down though not enough to qualify as terrain. It was old sand dunes now covered with organic matter, forest and palmetto. We headed back on the old telephone line trail which was completely flat. Welcome to the Southeast.

01/30/26 - The Beach at Sea Island We took a walk along the beach looking for birds and sea life. There were some sand dollars, some peeps and some pelicans flying. There were also a few machines moving around sand at low tide.

01/29/26 - Fort Frederica We also stopped by Fort Frederica, now long abandoned. There was a whole town here along with the army base. Now, there are old trees and a few old fortifications. The British were worried about the Spanish heading north and invading back then. Now, it's a historical park and a very nice one.

01/28/26 - The North Dike - Birds We hitched a ride up to the North Dike and visited several blinds and lookouts. The wetlands were full of birds.

01/27/26 - North Dike - Alligators It wasn't just birds. There were several generations of alligators as well.	Mama
	Babies
Young 'uns

	On the walk back to the lodge

01/26/26 - The Atlantic Beach That afternoon we took a guided walk along the Atlantic beach. The tide was low and the sky was very dramatic. We could see the weather about to change. There was a cold snap coming in bringing sleet and snow to the region.	Oh yes, an armadillo
	The road to the beach
At the beach


	All sorts of beach birds

Very dramatic sky


	Seen on the drive back to the lodge
Also seen

01/25/26 - Found on the Beach Here is some of the stuff we found on the beach. There was driftwood, and there were jellyfish, sand dollars and a number of interesting shells. There was also a lot of sand which is more interesting than it sounds.

01/24/26 - Night Owl Hunt

After dinner, we went out to hunt for owls. Our guide had a Bluetooth speaker that she used to play owl calls. We walked along the road in the dark as she played the calls, and we heard owls responding in the trees around us. Then it started to rain. We were exhausted and now wet. We didn't see any owls, but we gave it the old school try.

Something we did see

01/23/26 - Three Pines and South Pond It was colder, but we took a walk from the lodge to the Three Pines Trail and then around South Pond. There are just so many walks one can take on Little St. Simon's Island.
	Sandy soil

	A cardinal
An eagle's nest
Mushrooms, something of a surprise

01/22/26 - The North Dike Revisited The wind picked up in the afternoon. At least we weren't having a snow or ice storm. Still, it was chilly up in the spotting tower.
	One of the alligators



	Remember this pelican. This is the one that decided to fight the wind. We saw him flapping furiously overhead before he made an emergency landing on our spotting tower.
Yeah, that guy

01/21/26 - Last Night and Day in Georgia We said goodbye to Little St. Simon's Island in the glow of morning. It was cold and windy, and we were a small party departing, so we took the smaller but faster boat rather than the more larger, more sedate one. It was a wild ride but a short one. We had a 300 horsepower motor and blasted over the water leaving a cloud of spray. It was cold, and the wind was fierce, but it was over quickly. We had a short drive to The Cloister where we had a quiet dinner watching the sunset, inland over the river. We may be from the west coast, but we weren't going to get tricked into watching the sun set over the Atlantic Ocean. The next morning, we took a short walk on the beach. The rest of the day was going to be planes, trains and automobiles. We had to drive to Charleston and catch a flight to Seattle which naturally meant taking the Seatac subway from one of the satellite terminals. We really did take a train. Our plan was to spend a night at Seatac and then catch a puddle jumper home. The night in Seattle went as planned.
	The hot water line in froze in the night. Here's some more frozen water.

02/05/25 - Little St Simons - A Stop at Fort Frederica En route to Little St. Simon's Island we stopped at Fort Frederica to eat our left overs and stretch our legs. There are ruins, historical gardens and the view of the coastal waterway the British fort once defended from the Spanish. It was February, but we did spot a violet in bloom and ripe oranges. Oranges are green until cold weather ripens them into the form that turns up in grocery stores.


Some oranges, too high up to reach, so probably sour

02/04/25 - Little St Simons - Flatboat to the Island We took a flatboat out to Little St Simons Island. It was a very pleasant ride on calm waters. On our previous visit, it had been wet and icy. All of us passengers huddled under blankets. This trip was quite different.

02/03/25 - Little St Simons - Arrival, Needlerush Trail and Sunset We took the flatboat from the Hampton River Marina to Little St Simon's Island. As soon as we were on land, we took a short walk north up and along the Needlerush Trail. We felt right at home. Then, we went and watched the sunset before dinner.

02/02/25 - Little St Simons - Sancho Panza, Controlled Burns and More One of the guides at Little St Simons took us up north to an area of the island we had not explored. We visited the Twin Oaks, two old gnarly live oaks with long almost horizontal branches twisted and warped around each other. It's hard to capture this in pictures since the trees wrap around one. There were bones and feathers on the ground. We passed through one of the controlled burn areas with charred vegetation and black ash on the ground. This is part of the island management plan. The burned area was a real contrast to the lush local vegetation. We also stopped at Sancho Panza beach. It was once wild dunes, but now most of the dunes are covered with grasses. It's one of the many transformations. We didn't spend a lot of time exploring, so we're hoping to get back to the area on a future visit.	Welcome to the island


Welcome to the island
A burned area

The Twin Oaks



Sancho Panza Beach

02/01/25 - Little St Simons - Atlantic Beach In the afternoon, we headed out to the Atlantic Beach. The tide was going out, and it was going to be an extremely low low tide. This meant lots of beach and a GPS track that mainly had us walking on water. We did some bird watching en route, and saw a friendly and photogenic armadillo. Then we crossed the dread Mosquito Causeway to the beach. It was too cold for our insect "friends", so there was not a mosquito to be found. One of the nice things about having a guide was having someone to point out and explain things. We had seen and collected sand dollars before, but our guide showed us the distinctive pattern of holes that they leave when they bury themselves at low tide. He even dug one up for us so we could see the moving spikes on its underside. (Of course, he returned that one to its hole.) We also saw some little sand worms and their trails of snot and sand along the beach and olive shells with their distinctive tracks. We walked far out on the sand into the sea. The sky was bright and the ocean endless.	En route


The Mosquito Causeway
Sand patterns


A living sand dollar	A sand dollar hideaway
	A sand dollar in the sand
	Olive shell with its distinctive track

01/31/25 - Little St Simons - Norm's Pond We explored the beach for a while. Then we headed back to the lodge with a stop at Norm's Pond. Norm is the biggest alligator on the island, and Norm's Pond is the biggest, best and deepest pond there. Norm lives alone except for Norma, his lady alligator friend.

01/30/25 - Little St Simons - An Amazing Sunset We knew it was going to be an amazing sunset when the color started appearing in the late afternoon. There were also some leaping fish in the river, so we were well entertained before dinner.

Caption
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