Eastbound: Pensacola FL via Tallahassee to Jekyll Island GA

In which Sid and Doris see America at play, drive through Kill Me Quick in another downpour before settling in to Jekyll Island Resort, sometime holiday home of William Rockefeller and JP Morgan.

Leaving Pensacola we stay along the coast and are soon driving past bright white sand dunes of the Emerald Coast.

A little further along is Destin and Choctawhatchee Bay which is very densely developed for holiday makers, Dubai style.

When we get to the Tallahassee Marriott Courtyard we can see a truck driver has missed the sign saying No thru truck traffic, and has mashed into the hotel portico. S and D explain how leaky Mr Jolly is and are allowed to park him out front, under cover of what is left of the gracious porte cochere.

 

Tallahassee is just a sleep over and we get straight on the road next day despite the town harbouring a car museum. The rain theme continues and at Valdosta Doris drives through a place identified by the phone-camera as Kill Me Quick.

We escape in time for mascot S to see a freight train go through Pinevale (another place that until now was not famous).

After seeing a couple of entries in the My Flag Is Larger Than Your Flag competition, the deluge finally subsides as we reach Jekyll Island.

The Civil War brings an end to the agricultural plantations and in 1866 the DuBignon family sells the island to industrialists who created a hunting retreat. See what happened there: agriculture to industry. And now, after big government intervention, it is all hotels and service industry. No more hunting. In these more eco-friendly times there is a sea turtle hospital on the site.

Anyway, in the1890s the Club house is found to be a bit busy and the rooms rather poky so the families of the gilded age build their own condominiums and houses around the site. One is modestly named Sans Souci, see also Frederick the Great’s palace at Potsdam which is bigger.

The island is on the Intra-Coastal Waterway. The largest yachts could not dock so the likes of Corsair, private steam yacht of JP Morgan, would anchor off so the club launch could come fetch the guests.

Hunting gave way to golf, tennis and croquet. In 1910 the resort was the venue of a secret meeting of prominent bankers. So secret that on the train ride to Brunswick (where to be met by the island’s steam launch) they only ever referred to each other by first name and the whole affair was held under cover of a duck hunt (not a croquet contest). The purpose was to stabilise US banking after the panic of 1907 and here they set out the basis of the Federal Reserve Banking System which was set up in 1913.

The last season of the exclusive club was 1942, with the State of Georgia buying the island in 1947 and re-opening the club house and Annex to the likes of S and D in 1985. Since then the grand holiday homes have been converted to add more hotel rooms. Not Sans Souci and not Choctawhatchee Bay either.

S and D settle in, giving Mr Jolly a few day’s rest as they lounge in the enclosed and air conditioned old balcony with its view to the water. Oh, it is going to be busy. Croquet!

The hotel’s posh shuttle is this Buick 8, seen here in humble Ford company that does actually go from place to place.

There are no pictures of food, but Doris’s camera specialises in sunsets, these seen from the Wharf restaurant. S and D dearly love to eat on the dock, and the conversation turns again to the relative merits of car vs boat touring.

Of course they go exploring, finding a new Cusco …. Or possibly an abandoned amphitheatre, maybe dating back to the late twentieth century?

There are bikes for hire so your duo pedal to the furthest reaches of the island, the beach, the frozen yoghurt shop, and the museum of the island history with excellent advice on how to use the new invention that was the telephone. There are pictures of the little sand go-karts, and – on a separate poster – stories of the days of segregated holidays.

There is also a local airport, complete with car hire facility.

This has been a holiday in a holiday topped off with lawn croquet in front of the original club house. Sid and Doris are in their gilded age.

 

 

 

 

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