dduelin
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This morning promised fair skies and mid 50 temps before a couple of days of rain so I rode the RT up the coast to explore roads near Sapelo Island, GA. The only way out to the island is by boat and I rode out to the ferry landing that takes paying guests out to Sapelo. People have been living on Sapelo for about 4,500 years. I'd like to take the tour of the island one day but not today. After the ferry landing I headed south on GA 99. As I rode through the nearby town of Darien I stopped to gawk at a large wooden boat on display in the tiny downtown. The dirt was still fresh around the concrete pad the boat was sitting on. Seems Sapelo, like some other coastal Georgia islands that make up Georgia's Golden Isles, were owned in the 17th and 18th centuries by wealthy farmers then industrialists that envisioned working plantations for raising cotton, tung oil, indigo, rice and sugarcane or exclusive resorts that could offer a respite from northern winters. The railroad that Henry Flagler built down the coast of Florida was not yet built and southern coastal Georgia was the end of the line so to speak. Thomas Spalding owned the island at the turn of the 18th century and he brought West African slaves to work his island plantation. Descendants of these slaves still live on the island today and hold onto a distinct culture and language called Gullah that developed after they arrived in 1802. Spaulding died in 1851 and the island eventually was sold to the Reynolds family (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco) and R. J. Jr had the 60 foot work boat Kit Jones built on Sapelo in 1939 from trees native to Sapelo. The art of wooden boat building in 1939 brought forth the Kit Jones which led a long working life as a ferry, tug, military coastal patrol vessel and educational research support vessel in GA and MS and she now sits in downtown Darien.
Sapelo Island lies 5 miles east of this ferry landing.
The M/V Kit Jones.
Further down the road I saw this F-104 Starfighter at Glynco Airport in Brunswick, GA. Known alternatively as "a missile with a man in it" or the Widow Maker it's the only conventional jet aircraft to achieve 100,000 feet of altitude. In service with the West German Luftwaffe 292 of about 900 F-104s were lost to crashes, 116 fatalities. When I was learning to fly in 1974 one of my USAF instructors had many hours logged flying Starfighters. He called it the Flying Prostitute because the tiny wings offered "no visible means of support."
252 miles.
Sapelo Island lies 5 miles east of this ferry landing.
The M/V Kit Jones.
Further down the road I saw this F-104 Starfighter at Glynco Airport in Brunswick, GA. Known alternatively as "a missile with a man in it" or the Widow Maker it's the only conventional jet aircraft to achieve 100,000 feet of altitude. In service with the West German Luftwaffe 292 of about 900 F-104s were lost to crashes, 116 fatalities. When I was learning to fly in 1974 one of my USAF instructors had many hours logged flying Starfighters. He called it the Flying Prostitute because the tiny wings offered "no visible means of support."
252 miles.
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