Road Trippin' to the Beach

This year we needed to trek from Fort Bragg to St. George Island.  Nine and a half hours of driving time.  Do you know what that turns into with all the potty stops and lunch breaks?  A ROAD TRIP!  I decided that since we had two days to get to the beach we might as well take our time and enjoy it.  I found a website called roadtrippers.com and used it to plan our stops in conjunction with our meal times and sleeping spots.  I could even tell them how far off the route I was willing to adventure.  So, with a rough plan in mind we started out!

Our first stop was three hours down the road at Colleton State Park.  This was a real treasure.  We were the only ones there.  Brand new playground equipment, clean bathrooms, and plenty of picnic space!

My picnic lovin'  boys!

Our next stop was my favorite!  We visited the Georgia State Railroad Museum in Savannah.  There were about a dozen old train cars to climb in and tour.  The red caboose was a favorite, but the boys also thought the train car with a toilet was amazing!  Boys!

The rain stopped just in time for us to ride a 1913 steam engine on the turn table and down a short track.   The ride was complete with tons of black smoke.  The boys looked like they had spent a day in a mine.  Whenever the train would stop Benaiah would yell "GO!"  He loved the ride and the train whistle!  Huck, our Thomas the Tank Engine lover, was in paradise!

This was right after it started moving.  Eli and Benaiah were not quite sure.

The big boys got to push the hand car up and down the track with their big muscles!

Also at the museum was a room full of model trains set up to look like Savannah.  The boys had to visit this room twice.  They followed the train around and around the room!

Biggest to smallest!

Old firefighting hose!  We took this picture for Uncle Darryl!

 That night we made it past Jacksonville and stayed in a hotel.  The boys think hotels are something else!  The night was a little rough.  Eli talked on the room phone in his sleep and fell out of bed twice!  However, we were up and out without a hitch.  Then my planning started going downhill.  Our next stop was suppose to be The Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park.  The website said they had a Bat Hotel.  It also showed tons of people.  We pull up to a man with the roughest voice you have ever heard.  Danny tells him we would like to visit the bat hotel.  The look on his face should have told us to turn around and leave.  Instead, the man suggested we also visit the restaurant or the "nice beach on the river for the children".  Oh my word!  The place was a ghost town!  We almost got lost trying to find the bat hotel, and when we found it it was nothing more than a tree house full of bats that we couldn't venture near.

While we were there we decided to cut our loses and go see about the beach at the river.  This is what we found.  Nice isn't exactly how I would describe it.   Black, yes.  Murky, yes.  Dangerous, yes.  Infested, definitely.  Nice, not so much.

 After hightailing it out of there, we traveled on to the Crooked River Lighthouse in Carrabelle.  Lucky us!  They only do climbs on Saturday and Sunday from 1-4.  We showed up on a Saturday at 12:45.  Sadly, the lady working the lighthouse said our three littlest were two little to climb.  However, they had a super cool pirate ship playground!  We were able to picnic for lunch while the kids could also run and climb.  Much better than McDonald's!

Finally, we reached St. George!  Our first road trip complete!  We had some fun adventures and one real bust, but we made lots of memories!  Oh, and on the way home we drove most of the way at night :D