We've Moved to Skidaway Island State Park

We made camping reservations at Skidaway Island State Park months ago, and over and over we have heard from other campers that was a great decision. This was the day to move the motor home to our new home at Skidaway Island, and we were greeted with this view of our new driveway. Nice!

Arriving on a Sunday afternoon, we had our pick of sites. We found one with full shade and 50 amp electric. Nice again! Then we tried several of the biking trails at Skidaway Island State Park. We love those giant live oaks and all that spanish moss. Nice again and again!

We have learned that the best advice a traveler can get is from a fellow camper who used to live where we are heading. So when we met Ginny and Bob from Savannah, we wrote down all the advice they freely shared with us. They lived on Skidaway Island for 21 years, and they gave us detailed information about a great bike ride there.

The trail took us through neighborhoods filled with golf courses and picturesque ponds.

It took us to an observation tower over the marshes at the edge of Skidaway Island.

It took us to the harbor, where boats can start their journey in the salt water of the Wilmington River. Denisa was fascinated with the method they use to hoist the boats out of the water with an over-sized fork-lift.

Then the forklift will raise and lower the boat to place it into one of the storage spots in this triple high boat parking garage.

It was a great bike ride around our new island. Skidaway is an island because it has water on all sides. But none of those sides is bordered by the Atlantic ocean, so we have no sandy beach with waves. But there are marshes everywhere, and we are surrounded by brackish rivers that go up and down with the tides. Crossing over one of the area bridges starts Denisa singing every time, because it is the bridge over Moon River. If you just started humming the song "Moon River" when you read the last sentence, you are showing your age. That song was written in the early 1960's by one of the favorite sons of Savannah, Johnny Mercer. One of the lines of that song is especially close to Denisa's heart as it describes our life right now--"Two drifters off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see."

We also visited Bonventure Cemetery, just to visit Johnny Mercer's grave. His grave has the long-stemmed yellow flowers at its base in the picture below. But the most interesting part of our visit was the marble bench, with titles of the many songs that Mr. Mercer wrote. This will start everyone humming with song titles like, "Hooray for Hollywood" and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby." You can click on the picture below to read more song titles on the edge on the bench.

The front of the bench has more song titles, and lists his accomplishments like the "Founder of Capitol Records" and "Winner of 4 Academy Awards." Now Denisa is humming "Jeepers Creepers" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive."

His Mother, Lillian Mercer, is buried close by. We enjoyed the quote barely legible on the side of her tomb stone, "My mama done tol' me." That would be a famous lyric line from another Johnny Mercer song, "Blues in the Night."

We also did some hiking and bird-watching on the nature trails at Skidaway Island State Park. We found out that the elusive Painted Bunting has been seen in the area, so we went bunting hunting. It might be the most colorful bird in the world, and we had never seen one. 

We talked to another hiker that gave us great advice for following the bunting's characteristic chirp. That worked to spot our first one, high in the tree tops. Then we got smart and just hung out at the bird feeders behind the nature center and let the birds come to us.

All these pictures may look like birds in cages. But they are actually free-flying birds enjoying the bird feeders that are protected from larger birds by a wire mesh. We were lucky enough to even see more than one painted bunting at a time.

Sorry for so many pictures, but we were really excited to see these colorful birds for the first time. All of these birds are males, as the female painted bunting has lime green feathers.

So we are loving our new home on Skidaway Island. But the main reason we are here is to host Denisa's Mother for a week-long vacation in Georgia. We picked her up at the airport in Augusta (because the airplane ticket was half the price as one to Savannah), and we'll be starting our exploration with her in the next blog.