St. Simons Island

St. Simons Island greeted us with a canopy of live oaks so thick over Frederica Road that daylight arrived in dapples rather than sheets. Lia and I had rented bikes at the causeway and pedaled in slowly, past antebellum tabby ruins and marsh views that opened up gold and green between the trees. Of Georgia’s Golden Isles, St. Simons is the most developed and the easiest to fall into a rhythm with — a village center, a working lighthouse, and enough shaded lanes to make a bicycle the only vehicle you need.

The village and the lighthouse

St. Simons Village clusters around its 1872 lighthouse, one of the few in Georgia still open to climb, and we made the 129-step spiral to the top for a long view over the sound toward Jekyll Island and the shrimping fleets working the channel. Below, the pier drew locals with fishing rods and a scoop shop that seemed to be doing a brisk business regardless of the hour. We ate boiled peanuts on a bench and watched dolphins arc through the water just off the pier, close enough that a crowd gathered each time a fin surfaced.

Fort Frederica and the marsh

Inland, the ruins of Fort Frederica trace the outline of a 1736 British garrison town, its tabby foundations — a colonial concrete of oyster shell and lime — laid out under more of those enormous oaks. James Oglethorpe built it to guard the colony’s southern flank from Spanish Florida, and the site’s quiet, half-swallowed-by-forest feel made the history land harder than any museum could. Afterward we drove out to the causeway marsh overlook at sunset, the cordgrass burning amber as the tide pulled out, egrets stalking the shallows in long unhurried steps.

Getting There

Glynn County/Brunswick’s small airport handles limited flights, but most visitors fly into Jacksonville, about an hour south, or Savannah, roughly 90 minutes north, and drive in via the causeway from Brunswick. Once on the island, it’s compact and largely flat, making bikes and golf carts genuinely practical ways to get around.