We left I-95 at exit number 1, so we are obviously barely over the border. We bought a Georgia state park pass, ready to spend around a month enjoying some beautiful campgrounds in a new state. So we headed to our first--Crooked River State Park. True to its name there is a crooked river that runs right beside our campground.
Arriving on a Sunday, the weekend campers had just left so we got our choice of camp sites. There are three with 50 amp electricity, and we scored one of those in a beautiful pull-through site that is completely shaded.
One of our favorite sites of all time, we have a private dining area encircled by palmettos and tall hardwoods. It is beautifully serene here!
Once we get to a new state park, the first thing we do is explore the trails. We were pleasantly surprised with the nicely shaded bike paths that wind throughout the park.
Denisa is wearing a jacket because it is cool in the shade this afternoon.
The hiking trails are also shaded, with vines right out of a Tarzan movie hanging down from the tops of those trees down to the ground.
We are loving the palmettos and wind-swept trees that are pushed sideways.
Some of the trees are almost horizontal, and their roots look like they have been pulled out of the ground. That tangle of roots and vines above the ground is a wonder to us.
We have had visitors in our camp site, including this armadillo that comes around to poke in the ground every day.
There are hundreds of squirrels in these woods, and one found his way to the top of our motor home. We could hear him running on the roof, so Mark climbed our ladder to scare him away. He scurried up to our highest point--our cell phone booster--when Mark showed up on the ladder. When Mark got closer, the squirrel made a flying leap to the tree branch far above. Squirrels are amazing trapeze artists when they are scared.
We walked to the state park's nature center and got to visit the creatures housed there. The ranger took this corn snake out for us, and he instantly started wiggling towards the camera. Denisa has found it is extremely hard to hold a camera still with a snake just an inch away, so the closer ones were blurry.
We made plans to kayak on Crooked River, so we stopped in at the ranger station for lessons about the tide. We are close enough to the ocean that this water is brackish, and the level of water will change up to 8 feet in depth depending on the stage of the tide. This view of the river from the pier was taken close to high tide, when the metal barrier around the boat ramp were barely showing above the water.
We went back to the pier to take a picture at lower tide, where those same metal walls were out of the water by 5 feet. This dramatic tidal change causes the flow of water to change directions in Crooked River. So it is possible to float out with the tide, and then float back home with tide. This sounded like a great plan! We learned that high tide at the ocean is at 7:01 a.m., but we have to add 2 hours and 9 minutes to that because of our distance from the Atlantic. We also learned that we needed to be at the half-way point of our proposed kayaking loop at low tide (1:24 p.m. on the coast, but 1 hour 20 minutes later at our point on the loop). It was like a mathematical written problem to determine what time we needed to leave our boat pier in the morning, and how fast we would need to paddle to make the tidal surge work for us. To shorten a very long math problem, when we determined we would have to wake up at 5:30 a.m. for a possibility to make it work, we lost some interest in this adventure. We lost more interest when we saw all the sharp oyster bars that were uncovered at low tide, including all of them clinging to the metal walls by the boat ramp.
So instead of kayaking, we explored our nearest neighbor--the little town of St. Marys. It was a beautiful blue sky day, and we meandered around town with the map we picked up at the visitor center. Our path led us by the First Presbyterian Church, standing here since 1808.
From there we walked to the Oak Grove Cemetery, where most of the head stones were as old as that church.
There were a number of tombstones engraved in French. These were French Acadians that were exiled out of Nova Scotia in the 1750's. We knew that many of these people settled on the Louisiana coast and became known as Cajuns. But a group also stopped on the Geogia coast, here in St Marys. We don't read French, but they died here in the 1820's.
We walked the St. Marys Riverwalk near the port, where a tall ship was harbored.
We are already enjoying Georgia, and loving our campground in the woods. But we are looking forward to dipping our toes into the Atlantic soon!
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