The Hutchings Family: Jekyll Island Day 2

It's possible that we did not sleep well, but I won't say much more about that. We spent the morning doing awesome things, despite our fatigue.

We first visited the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on the Island and learned about the endangered creatures and what the center is doing to help turtles. At our visit, there were 75 confirmed nests on the Island, and 476 in all the state of Georgia. The greatest part of the visit, though, was not the learning about turtles, but seeing the turtles. They also run a rehabilitation center in which they care for injured and ill turtles, hopefully helping them to return to the wild. They had large and small turtles of all ages and situations swimming in tanks with placards to tell us about them and their injuries and their healing progress. It was fascinating to see them, so large and beautiful, as well as sad to see many with scars or bandages on them. There was one being released back into the wild only 2 days later; I kind of wish we would have stayed to be a part of that, if possible.

We also enjoyed some animals at the Tidelands Nature Center, including a pair of baby alligators. It was a relief to finally see live alligators, because the boys had been hoping and dreaming and praying to see them our entire trip.

We struck camp at lunch, then Michael and I went for a bike ride before hauling our over-full car to the wharf where we caught a boat to go dolphin spotting. We saw a dolphin before we left the dock, but we continued on, nonetheless, and enjoyed 90 minutes of fresh ocean breezes and dolphins aplenty. We actually went down around the South end of the island and there encountered a pod of dolphins the captain estimated to be 30-40 dolphins. There were groups of them everywhere, including several calves, always swimming in sync with an adult on either side of them. It was awesome.

If you're a scholar of the blog, or nature in general, you'll remember that the north end of the island erodes. Well, of course, all that sediment needs somewhere to go, so it's deposited on the South end of the island to the north. This is a photo of Jekyll's South end, and that is a shrimp boat that ran aground several years ago as it was trying to take a close pass during a storm. The sand from the neighboring island has slowly built up and buried it so now all you see is the masts.